


Heartbeat

by MintyElectronica



Series: Powerverse [3]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Drama & Romance, F/M, Fluff, Monster Significant Others, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Partners to Lovers, Science Fiction, That one trope where your loved one loses control of their powers, Transformation, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 42
Words: 26,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28131738
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MintyElectronica/pseuds/MintyElectronica
Summary: To say that something went wrong with Bill's latest experiment is an understatement.Months ago, he had infused himself with flygon DNA to explore life as a pokémon (and because it seemed like a good idea at the time). Now, he's discovering that the process he'd used to change himself back wasn't perfect and that there may be side effects to harboring a pokémon's genetic code.Namely, he's turning back into one, and he can't figure out how to stop it ... or why Lanette seems to trigger it.(Archive of a Tumblr RP arc. Please see the notes at the beginning for a full explanation.)
Relationships: Mayumi | Lanette/Sonezaki Masaki | Bill
Series: Powerverse [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2053947
Kudos: 6





	1. Nothing to worry about!

**Author's Note:**

> Quick note, but the following (as well as other works in the Powerverse series) are archives of posts from the Tumblr blog, The Pokédex According to Bill ([@bills-pokedex](https://bills-pokedex.tumblr.com)), posted here for easy reference. For more context about the two characters involved here, you'll probs want to hit that blog up. Otherwise, the tl;dr version is that Bill writes advice posts that are then edited by Lanette (LH here) and posted for the viewing public, and antics like this are pretty commonplace. Also commonplace: Bill and Lanette bantering in footnote-style dev notes. 
> 
> Finally, all of the asks were sent in by actual readers of the aforementioned blog. A huge thanks goes out to everyone who submitted these asks and helped craft the story. Literally none of this would exist without you, and I love and appreciate every one of you eternally. :D <3
> 
> Hokay, folks! You're caught up! Have fun!

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  so, bill, have any remnants of being a flygon shown up yet?

…a few, yes. Nothing to worry about.

* * *

To put the obvious bluntly, Bill knows he reacts to things in ways most people wouldn’t. A pokémon he’s been waiting for has just destroyed his home and disappeared into the fog? That’s fine. Turned into a clefairy? Mild inconvenience. Bill’s life could be on actual, literal fire at any point in time, and he’d walk through it with a sense of grace and calmness afforded to him only by a lifetime of mastering the art of compartmentalization.

So when he wakes up that morning feeling off somehow, it doesn’t strike him as something to be concerned about. He knows he should probably document it because, you know, he did mess with his genetics less than two months ago, and the whole field of self-genetic editing is still pretty new, which means that the occurrence of any sort of side-effect is … probable. Perhaps not entirely likely but still probable. But the point is that he didn’t record it yet and is still debating on whether or not he should, less because doing so would be admitting that he should be a little concerned and more because, frankly, he doesn’t want to concern Lanette. 

(He knows he should talk to her about this. Or, more accurately, talk to her about just how long she plans on staying there while pointedly dodging the subject of his—as she puts it—“condition.” That’s another thing he puts off, mostly because it’s unpleasant to even think about, and Bill, frankly, only devotes himself to unpleasant work if it’s not directly related to him personally.)

But this? This is new.

Or, to backpedal—as if this whole thing isn’t confusing enough—the part where he wakes up to the chattering of his pokémon isn’t new. Hearing their gossip over breakfast has been Bill’s new norm since he’d arrived back from Galar, and it’s become almost a comfort—like he’s suddenly privy to an entirely new realm of information.

The part where his senses are sharper isn’t new either. This one was harder to explain to Lanette because it wasn’t too easy to drop into everyday conversation. “By the way, I can smell you now, and that’s nice”? “I can spot magikarp jumping out of the ocean from the top of the lighthouse tower”? And never mind about taste.

The part where he feels the inexplicable primal urges of a flygon aren’t new either. He found out that one the first time Lanette made sausages. That was how he worked in the part about his senses, right after the part where he explained he wasn’t actually trying to burn himself, and honestly, he wasn’t quite sure what he was doing right then.

No, those aren’t new. Nor is the immunity to electricity (a discovery that also scared the everloving flame out of Lanette) or the weakness to cold (a discovery that irked Bill but delighted his Hoennian partner) or the other “powers” he had discovered thus far.

It’s the fact that he swears his nails weren’t as sharp as they were the night before. The skin of his forearm feels rougher too, and is it just him, or is it greener? And when he runs his tongue over his teeth, are his teeth sharper than they were last night?

He sits in front of his computer, that single line still written under that ask. As soon as he hits the button beneath it, it’ll be sent to Lanette, and she’ll read it and approve it, and that will be that. And normally, it’s so easy to lie about whether or not he feels all right. If he doesn’t want her or anyone else to worry, all he has to do is smile and carry on like nothing is wrong. He’s done it before. He’s done it many times before. Lanette hadn’t even known about the Clefairy Incident until Red blew that one open to the entire world.

But he’s hesitating now. And that’s new to him too.

Bill looks over his shoulder and across the room. Lanette is there, at the desk space they’ve cleared for her—back to him, knees pulled to her chest, and a cup of hot chocolate in her hands. She’s reading the results of her system’s latest maintenance report, but in the corner of her screen, there’s the admin dashboard for the blog, waiting for Bill’s post to show up.

She has no idea, he realizes. She hasn’t noticed the skin or the teeth or the nails. He tugs his sleeve down, slipping it back over his arm. And then, he hits “SAVE.”

Behind him, he hears a ping, followed by a click, then a silence, then another click, and he presses his back into his chair and moves on to the next question.

Nothing to worry about.


	2. Could you be more specific?

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Can you, ah, be more specific?

About what, anonymous? The flygon traits or the runerigus facts?

If the former, I assure you, it’s nothing exciting, and I doubt it’s permanent. It’s simply my body readjusting itself to humanity.

If you mean the runerigus facts … well, all right. Touching your own runerigus’s shadowy limbs flings you into a vivid nightmare in which you attend an important meeting or give an important report for class while standing before your peers naked.

Not that I know this from experience, of course.

* * *

Another coping mechanism: feigning ignorance.

It’s hours later, and Bill had retreated to his room. “A headache,” he claimed, a few hours ago. And Lanette bought that, partly because she knows that constant exposure to a kadabra is not all fun and wonder and mostly because, well. If Bill has to be honest, she’s the best example of human decency he’s ever come across most days.

Anyway, so he retreated darkness of the currently locked and (until Lanette arrived) criminally underused master bedroom of the Sea Cottage, and as far as Lanette knows, he’s resting and occasionally returning to work on a tablet. What he’s actually doing is frantically using the aforementioned tablet to hash out solutions to his current predicament.

That is to say, Bill is currently locked in his room because he was right. The teeth? The skin? The nails? All true, and it’s getting worse. Or, well, it’s not really that it’s getting worse, exactly. It’s more like it fluctuates between worse and better. One moment, he looks perfectly human, and the next? A rash of green scales blossoms over his arms. Or his teeth sharpen. Or his back aches, like a pair of wings and a tail are trying to grow out but can’t quite make it. And then, again, it all disappears, and he’s perfectly human again.

This. This is new. When he had merged with Primrose or that one rattata or the nidorino, the process to separate him from them was, well. It wasn’t _perfect_ , but it never left _remnants_. He never found himself slowly turning back into a pokémon or translating pokémon speech in his head or anything of the sort. At most, he’d become a little more resilient and gotten a little more energy during full moons. The point is, that the longterm effects of those experiments were so negligible that Bill hadn’t even _noticed_ he had one of those abilities until he realized his coffee supplies were lasting a little bit longer every month.

Which is to say that the system hadn’t done this to him before, and he has zero idea why it’s done it to him now. Running his hands through his hair, he stares at the tablet with a mixture of exhaustion and worry. The cell separation system’s logs are spread across the screen, absolutely covering it with charts and data. And all of them say that the separation was a success. It successfully pulled a human out of the sample and deposited him into chamber A, just like he had asked. So what happened?

Unless…

He flicks through charts, taps out a few commands, summons a new window.

It doesn’t make sense. It won’t make sense until he’s gotten back into his lab, which he can’t do because Lanette is there, but the idea has wormed its way into his skull and taken root as a theory, and—

And what if the system did as he said but not _exactly_? What if it _had_ deposited a human into chamber A, but the sample wasn’t fully pulled out of that human? The results say he’s over 98% human—perfectly acceptable for someone who had previously merged with pokémon more than once—but what if he’s _wrong_ about what that remaining 2% is? Or what if it’s an error altogether? And the other “samples” that had gotten into his system—those were all stable because there was a source pokémon to go back to; what if this last one isn’t stable because _there’s no pokémon to separate from?_ What if it’s like a virus, and it’s spreading, and—

A thousand thoughts shift through Bill’s head all at once, and he feels his heart beat faster and faster until what feels like electricity rushes through his hands. He recoils and looks down, and his hands are glowing, as if part of him is evolving. Right in front of his eyes, his hands shift and change—fingers merging, tips sharpening, palms shrinking—until he finds himself staring at a pair of flygon claws.

For a long while, Bill sits on his bed, staring at his hands and then at the tablet under them.

“Stress,” he breathes. “Right. It-it’s probably responding to stress. Just stay calm, all right?”

He relaxes and closes his eyes for a moment, willing himself to clear his mind. When he opens them, he still has those flygon claws, but … they’ve taken on a slightly paler green. Or is that a trick of the light? Curling his claws into fists, he lowers his head. Then, he flops onto his back and sighs heavily.

“Lanette. What am I going to tell her?”

Yes. That’s his only concern. He can deal with the shapeshifting with grace, had she not been there. But … well, she didn’t take the immunity to electricity so well. On the other hand, he can see her point. To him, this is an exciting opportunity. To the outside world … well. If word got out that he’s suddenly been given uncontrollable powers that can hurt himself and—if pokémon moves are indeed available to him—possibly everyone around him, then … well. He can’t even imagine how quickly his and Lanette’s life work would be ruined permanently.

Which means the less Lanette has to worry, the better.

Which means…

Bill raises his claws in front of his face and sighs again.

“I’ll need to come up with a better excuse than just a headache,” he mutters.


	3. You *really* don't want to know what that clefairy said.

> **nt1274 asked:**  
>  so bill can hear his pokemon gossiping about him now? fun.

See, Lanette? There’s one person here who agrees!

`We still don’t know whether that’s a genetic abnormality or a brain rewiring, and neither of those options is good! —LH`

There’s probably an editorial note inserted here that I will neither read nor fully understand, so with that having been said, it’s been quite interesting, yes.

Granted, I’ve understood Foxglove on a level for a few years now, owing to the natural bond a psychic-type forges with their trainer. I just haven’t really been able to interpret his _language_ before. (Up until this point, if he really wanted me to know something, he would simply insert it as a thought into my head. That sounds more jarring than it actually is, I assure you.) The others, though—those have been new.

Fortunately, Lucky doesn’t really _gossip_. He’s also perhaps the one member of my team who’s had the closest reaction to Lanette’s upon finding out about this ability of mine. (Foxglove knew immediately, let’s just say.) It’s been a little difficult getting him to speak to me because of it, I admit, but he’s slowly warming up to the idea that he can share whatever is on his mind. Apparently, he wasn’t much of a talker before this point, though, so I don’t expect much conversation at all. He _does_ tell me how the plants are feeling every morning when I come in to tend to them, which is … rather unsettling, to know how the plants I’m growing for food are feeling.

Primrose, meanwhile, had the exact opposite reaction to Lucky. Granted, she was there when I’d figured it out, but when she realized I could understand her, she … went right back to her conversation with Ariel. I’m not quite sure what to make of her general reaction, to be honest, but every time I talk to her, she responds as if it’s perfectly normal. I wonder if it’s a side-effect of having already fused with me—as in, having a trainer who can understand her is perhaps the least strange thing she’s seen while under my care. 

…

She absolutely gossips, by the way. I’ve learned _quite_ a bit about my entire collection from her, including what happened to literally every sock that’s gone missing after I’d moved here, where I can find them buried, and which eevee (in the plural) did it.


	4. Knock knock. "Who's there~?"

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Dear Lanette, have you noticed anything about Bill acting strange lately? - storageporygon

**LH:** I have, yeah. It’s a little worrying, but I know Bill. He’ll probably spend a few days acting weird, and then, things will be completely back to normal, and I will have absolutely no idea what Bill was up to these past couple of days. In a way, it’s a little comforting to know that no matter what happens, Bill eventually lands on his feet.

This time, though … I don’t know. He’s been distant lately, so it’s hard to read.

He’ll probably be fine, though.

* * *

Lanette takes a deep breath and hits “PUBLISH.” She pushes back from the kitchen table but pauses there, hands clutching the edge of the wood.

She hasn’t gone into the lab since yesterday. Bill has been keeping himself in his room, so there really isn’t much of a point. So instead, she’s been writing in the kitchen, where she can make herself a steady supply of hot chocolates and wait. Not for him to come out, of course. For signs of his usual, energetic self.

Lanette gave up on pushing Bill to talk to her ages ago. She knows she’s imposing, and she’s a little guilty for it, and for that, she doesn’t push. But she’s there for him, she thinks to herself, and she’ll wait as long as she has to for him to be ready to tell her what it is this time. And she promises, silently, that she won’t freak out, no matter how strange it may be. In fact, she hasn’t so far, despite her temptation otherwise. She’s even shocked him, a little, when she took most of these powers of his in stride. Granted, she might have screamed just a little at the sight of him trying to dig into a hot pan or grabbing live wires with both hands, but … who can blame her? Honestly.

The kettle whistles, and Lanette looks up at the stove paces beside her. She takes a deep breath and gets up, then moves to make Bill a cup of tea.

She hasn’t seen him all day, and that’s a little worrying. Not because she’s wondering if he’s taking care of himself—Foxglove has been in and out of that room via Teleport, glasses of water and plates of sandwiches in hand—but more because … it’s just not like him to lock himself in his room all day. Locking himself in an entire house far away from civilization is more his style: space enough to sprawl out and countertops to claim for work and the like. In fact, she hasn’t even known him to use that bedroom other than for grooming when she was around. Not without protests to stern reminders that, yes, human beings need to sleep on something other than desks.

So … she’s offering an incentive. She’s not pushing him to talk to her, of course. No, he has to talk to her when he wants to. But … a little tea and a reminder that she’s there won’t be so bad, right?

Lanette relaxes her shoulder and plays with the chain on the tea infuser, slowly counting both minutes and months. Two months now. Two months since they’ve returned from Galar, and Bill hasn’t gotten back to normal yet. He tells her he’s fine and that it’s normal and that his body is simply readjusting, but … she knows him well enough to realize his definition of “normal” isn’t exactly straight as an arrow. So she promises him to stay with him until she knows he’s fine, whatever that actually means. And after that first month, she was almost convinced he was stabilizing enough to get by. And then this happened.

Her fingers tighten around the chain. She’ll stay here until she’s sure. That’s what she told Brigette, and it’s what she told Bill. The admin circle needs him, and she? She…

She can’t imagine what life would be like without him. It’s not a love thing, really. She’s not sure if she loves him, actually—not in the way the readers think she does, to her amusement. But she knows she feels like her life has been so much more interesting, so much better, with Bill in it. And she will fight the Weather Titans themselves if it meant Bill is safe and happy.

With that thought in mind, she pulls the infuser out of the cup and drops it onto the counter. It clatters, and she turns on her heel, business-like and head held high, to make her way into the hall. Foxglove is instantly by her side, padding cautiously in step with her. She’s not the only one who’s worried, and the kadabra’s expression tells her he hopes her plan works. With that vote of confidence, she approaches Bill’s bedroom door and knocks.

“Bill?” she says. “Hey. You don’t have to open the door right now, but I made you some tea. I’ll set it down on the floor right here. Just come get it when you’re ready, okay?” And she stoops down to place the cup on the floor. Then, after a pause, she adds, “Hey, um. I just want to let you know that … whenever you’re ready to talk, or if you need anything at all, I’m here for that too. Okay?”

There’s nothing but silence on the other side of the door. She rises to her full height and listens carefully, but she can’t even hear his footsteps. He just … isn’t responding at all. Frowning, Lanette sighs and turns away, only for Foxglove to grab her wrist with his free hand. The kadabra nods to the door, and a few seconds later, it swings open.

On the other side is Bill, and he looks … fine. Perfectly, utterly fine. Lanette can’t even tell that he’d even had that nasty headache he described. If anything, he looks perkier than usual. Glancing down, he spots the cup and swoops down to snatch it off the floor.

“Ah! Thanks, Lanette,” he says as he stands again. “Deeply appreciate the gesture.”

He pauses to take a swig, and Lanette watches him in bewilderment. How can he look so … normal? What had he been doing these past several hours?

She snaps back into attention when Bill pushes past her and strides down the hall. Shaking her head, she pulls her hand out of Foxglove’s grasp and follows him for a few steps.

“Hey!”

Bill whirls around to face her and stops, wide-eyed and waiting.

“Are you … are you okay?” she asks.

“Never better,” he responds. And he flashes her a wide, smile and starts back downstairs, heading for the lab.

Lanette lingers where she stands, letting the sight of her partner sink in. He looks fine. He seems fine. Everything about him is … fine.

Except something nags at her. Something about Bill. Something even he probably doesn’t even realize about himself. And the longer Lanette mediates on that mental image of her partner, the more she starts to notice it, like an object in the middle of some chaotic “spot the difference” exercise. So when she finally settles on what it is, it’s obvious, it’s big, and it’s…

“Were those fangs?” Lanette whispers to herself.


	5. Bold of you to assume I'd regret anything.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Have you noticed any leftover effects from the Flygon thing? If so, are they bad enough to make you regret taking the Galar excursion as a Flygon?

Bold of you to assume I’d regret anything.

On a serious note, I suppose you can say I have certain abilities I didn’t have previously. The one you all somehow seem to have learned about is the ability to understand pokémon, although that’s likely a “brain rewiring,” as Lanette puts it. Then, of course, there are a few minor abilities as well, but … nothing too interesting or major. Otherwise, I would say I’m perfectly, utterly stable.

* * *

Was that too obvious? That was too obvious. Still, Bill hits “PUBLISH.” He’s far too busy worrying about the system to bother this time. And it’s because he has only who knows how long before Lanette wakes up, and he has to figure things out now. So he rolls up his sleeves and switches windows.

He’s stable now, despite what one might think. Other than those fangs he’s yet to figure out how to get rid of, the green skin hasn’t reappeared, his hands are normal and complete with the right number of fingers … everything about him has been human since just minutes before Lanette had offered him tea last night. And he intends on keeping it that way, if he can only figure out what happened with the system. He keys in command after command, teaching the system how to run on a timer, and then on what to do when that timer hits zero, and then how to separate any remaining flygon out of his system without a recipient for said genetic material. Minutes turn into hours, and he’s sure the sun is slowly crawling up out of the horizon at this point, but he refuses to look up from his computer.

And then, just as he hears footsteps upstairs, he breaks away. He looks up, strikes the last few keys, and takes a breath. It’s now or never.

The door to the lab opens. The first footsteps strike the stairs. Bill pushes away from his desk and swiftly moves towards the teleporter, desperate to get there before Lanette sees him, desperate to undo whatever this is that he’s done, desperate to—

“Bill? What are you doing?”

He stops, hand on the edge of the teleporter, at the sound of Lanette’s forceful voice. He can feel his heart jump into his throat, and it takes more effort than he anticipated to turn around and face Lanette.

“I can explain,” he starts.

But then, he stops. Lanette stands across the lab from him, but even at a distance, Bill can see there’s something wrong. Her face is ghost-white, her eyes are wide, and her entire body is stone-stiff. This isn’t the normal shock of catching him in the act of something that even he thinks might be a stupid, stupid idea. No, this is more than shock. This is horror.

And it takes looking back towards the teleporter for Bill to figure it out. Because looking at the hand clinging to its edge, Bill can now see the scales actively spreading, like oil across water, along the skin of his arm. His heart beats even faster, and he steps back, catching his reflection in the metal of his invention. His face is turning green, swallowed by scales. A pain shoots through him, and he flinches away from his reflection, doubling over for a few steps as his mind fogs. He can hear Lanette shout in surprise and fear, and when he opens his eyes, he’s standing right in front of her, one three-clawed hand gripping her arm. She’s frozen, staring at something over his shoulder, and as he looks back, he sees what that something—what that thing that shot the bolt of pain through him—is. It’s a pair of wings, resting against his back, and beneath them, a tail.

At this point, Bill turns back to Lanette. They look into each other’s eyes for a long, quiet moment, and after a few minutes, Bill cracks what he hopes is a sheepish grin.

“Okay,” he says. “I can _really_ explain.”


	6. If you have to ask, then chances are the answer's not great there, buddy.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Oh???? You can explain this, Bill? You can explain how your definition of "perfectly stable" equates to "slowly but surely turning back into a flygon"? I am very, very interested in this "explanation" of yours.

….

Well, I’m still alive, aren’t I?

* * *

Out of the corner of Lanette’s eye, she watches Bill switch his tail as he sends off another post.

“Did I leave my camera on livestream mode again? Is that how they’re figuring this out?” he asks.

She sighs. “Probably. I don’t know.”

He looks over her shoulder, and she keeps her eyes on her laptop. She doesn’t mean to treat him coldly; in fact, she feels guilty about this whole thing. But she also can’t bring herself to look at him. It’s not because she feels sick over the fact that her best friend is some sort of flygon-human hybrid right now. It’s more because he seems different every time she looks at him. There are some things that don’t change: he’s always human-shaped, and that tail and those wings won’t go away. But everything else keeps shifting like some sort of kaleidoscope. His scales fade into and out of existence. His hands look like hands one moment and then claws the next. Even his face sometimes looks longer and more like a flygon’s snout than something recognizably human. It’s disorienting, to say the least.

“Can we talk about … this?” she asks, before he can get a word in edgewise. “I mean … how can you be answering asks at a time like this?”

“If I don’t, it would look more suspicious. You know that.”

She really wants to point out the fact that this makes no sense, but she doesn’t. Instead, she takes a deep breath.

“Okay. Walk me through this again,” she says. “What’s going on?”

“Well…” 

Bill walks towards her, and she really wishes he won’t. That would mean she’d have to confront the whole discomfort thing, and she doesn’t really know how to do that right now.

“The problem with the system is that it was originally designed to separate two or more beings into their original components,” he tells her. “That is to say, two or more types of genetic material go back to two or more genetic sources. Unfortunately, with our experiment, there was only one genetic source, technically, and we were asking the computer to split genetic material into two locations. Of course it would get confused! So this morning, I wrote a little program to teach the system to identify each genetic component and, well, send each one to where I tell it to, even if there is no living genetic source in the destination I point it to.”

“And you assume this will work correctly this time,” she says.

“I know this will work correctly this time,” he responds.

“And you were going to run this system without me, even though you needed me the last time around.”

“Well … with Foxglove.”

“You were going to run this system with a pokémon you wouldn’t normally allow around your highly sensitive equipment.”

“You don’t have to say it so incredulously.”

Lanette sighs. She pinches the bridge of her nose, just underneath her glasses, as she wills herself to center.

“Bill,” she says slowly, “why didn’t you tell me all this earlier?”

There was a small pause. And then, in a small voice—as if he knew what he was about to say sounded incredibly stupid—Bill replied, “I didn’t want to worry you.”

“Bill.”

She can see him recoiling at the corner of her vision, so she forces herself to look at him. He looks solid this time, at least, but he’s certainly not human. He looks like someone jammed a flygon head onto a person, and he’s wringing his claws nervously.

And that makes Lanette rethink her strategy. Don’t make him retreat. Lower your defenses, and he’ll lower his.

“Bill,” she says, softer this time, “I’m here for you, okay? And it’ll worry me more if you’re in trouble, and I can’t help you. So please. If something’s wrong, just tell me. I’m not going to tell you ‘I told you so’ or anything. If anything happens to you, it’s my fault too: I didn’t stop you from fusing with a flygon in the first place. So I can’t gloat, can I?”

He blinks. “Ah … no. I suppose you can’t.”

She gives him a smile and forces herself to keep looking, even as his face slowly regains its usual features.

“Anyway,” she says. “Should we try again?”

He smiles back and nods. “Same procedure, okay? You know what to do.”

She slides off her seat and pads to the control panel, where a vial is already loaded into the machine. Of course she knows what to do. And he walks towards the chamber, seemingly unaware of his disappearing tail and wings. But when he reaches the chamber, he stops and turns back, and at that moment, he almost looks perfectly fine to Lanette, barring the green tinge to his skin.

“Ah! One more thing,” he says, pointing to the console. “Keep an eye on the monitor there. I’m also having the computer run an analysis before and after the transfer, just to ensure that things have gone smoothly. I’m aiming for at least a 98% human final product, but if I can reduce the percentage of flygon in me by anything at all, that should be a start.”

“Final product?” Lanette quirks an eyebrow at him.

Bill smiles awkwardly in return, then ducks into the chamber.

“Wait.” Lanette peeks over the console. “How much sleep did you get before you wrote this program?!”

“Enough!” Bill calls out, before clanging the door shut.

Lanette drops back into her seat in front of the console. That door isn’t going to open until she operates this machine, she knows, so she prays to every god she believes in that Bill’s right. So she presses down on the vial, strikes a few buttons, and watches the teleporter whir to life.

Same lights. Same noise. Same smoke. Same deep, cold anxiety striking Lanette’s stomach hard. She wants Bill to be right. She needs him to be right. But then, her eyes fall onto the monitor, just as he asks. And she freezes.

The teleporter’s door clangs open, and she can hear Bill stumble out, sputtering and coughing. At first, she doesn’t notice; she’s too absorbed in what she’s seeing to notice. It’s when Bill is leaning over the console, hovering close to her, that she looks up. And her heart sinks deeper because Bill looks perfectly, utterly human—as human as he had before this whole thing started.

“So?” he asks. “How did I do?”

He doesn’t even have fangs right now. She considers blocking him from the monitor, but she knows she needs to tell him. He needs to know. He’ll find out eventually anyway, when his transformations start all over again.

Because she’s seen the data, before and after. And it’s perfectly, utterly, completely the same.


	7. VIBE CHECK.

> **a-wuzzley-guy asked:**  
>  THIS is a vibe check *bone rushes Bill back to Galar*

Joke’s on you. I have Levitate.

`So we’re just casually broadcasting your condition right now? —LH`

* * *

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Are you planning on keeping this incident quiet or telling other people? Your family, the rest of the admin circle? { assuming there's some in-universe reason why we are privy to everything that's going on and not everyone else, anyway. otherwise, i suppose they would already know. }

**LH:** Actually … word’s getting out pretty quickly, and Bill, being _Bill_ , isn’t putting much of an effort into controlling it. I guess it’s understandable, since we’ve got bigger things to worry about right now, but let’s just say trying to keep the Clefairy Incident a secret was counter to what Bill would usually do.

The admin circle’s taking things with varying levels of wellness. Celio’s probably the most panicked, and some of our newer recruits who have yet to learn all of the quirks of our group are a little … uncertain, to put it lightly. Some of the older members of our group are teaching the younger ones, though, so at least we have that. Specifically, Brigette’s known for a while because I’ve been keeping her up-to-date on why I’m here, and after that one entry, she’s been passing word along to the others. Cassius, Molayne, and Bebe sort of figured that this would happen eventually, so they’re taking it upon themselves to help keep the admins calm. And then you have Amanita, who … apparently wants pictures. I’m not sure why, and I’m a little concerned.

As for Bill’s family, they found out too, because his mom reads this blog. She’s really got to be the calmest, most patient woman on Earth, though, because she’s apparently supportive of Bill and only hopes he’s safe. I don’t think his younger siblings really get what’s going on, and his dad … well, I’m not surprised his dad doesn’t seem to have an opinion. (I don’t even know if Jack has any idea about what’s going on with Bill; it wouldn’t really surprise me if he didn’t.) As for his older sister … well, Bill’s been on a call with her for over an hour now. I think he’s trying to talk her out of rushing up here and, well. Of rushing up here.


	8. Tails are a pain in the ass. (You heard me.)

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  bill really out here faking sickness to get out of work

Haha, yes. _Faking._

* * *

Bill growls and massages his temples—carefully, to avoid hurting himself with his claws. With a deep breath, he adjusts himself on his seat in the middle of his foyer, rests his hands on his knees, and uses his tail to bat the tablet away. His head sinks into his chest, and he closes his eyes, searching for that one point inside himself where everything is calm, quiet, and clear.

Ten minutes later, that tail is still there. Bill opens his eyes again and fixes them on a point on the floor, but the longer he sits there, the more that worm of frustration burrows deeper into his head until all he can think of is that tail. It thumps against the floor rhythmically, as if to taunt him (even though, yes, he knows very well it’s responding to his every command). He exhales, twisting in his seat in irritation. His fingertips drums against his knees for a few seconds, and then, finally, he reaches for the tablet again.

“Ah ah ah.” Lanette’s foot blocks his hand. “You’ll get yourself worked up again.”

Bill groans but knows she’s right, and so, his hand drops to the floor. Flicking his tongue out, he licks his lips, intending on using it as a gesture of irritation, but he stops when he tastes tea in the air. Earl grey, a little underbrewed, and—

Oh blazes, his senses are changing.

Calm. Cool. Everything is fine. Bill takes a deep breath through his nose—where his senses, he notices, are dulled—and sits back to relax again.

Lanette kneels in front of him and places two cups of tea between them. Taking the tablet, she sits down and easily breaks through the passcode to flick through the blog. Then, with a sigh, she powers the tablet off and places it behind her, then hands her partner one of the cups. Between them, for that entire time, Bill’s tail continues to thump.

“Still no luck?” Lanette asks.

Bill forces himself to grin. Keep pretending everything’s fine. “Hey, it’s hard enough to keep everything else from going sideways.”

Lanette raises an eyebrow and grabs her own cup of tea. Blowing gently across its surface, she looks him up and down and says, “If it makes you feel any better, your face looks fine.”

“That…” Doesn’t. “That does. Thank you.” Bill takes a sip to wash out that statement. He doesn’t mean to lie to her. He’s more lying to himself at this point. Maybe tricking himself into being less annoyed with the whole situation might help.

See, the whole prospect of being able to turn into a flygon—not to mention his arsenal of powers at the moment—would normally excite Bill, and at first, it had. But the problem is that it’s getting irritating now: not being able to control what he looks like when and all. It’s like a costume he can’t take off when he wants to or a button that’s just out of his reach.

Lanette must be able to sense that he’s lying to her—in fact, he has no doubt she can—because she reaches across the way with her free hand and grasps his wrist gently. Beneath her touch, Bill’s skin takes on a vibrantly green hue, then slowly fades back into a sickly green, then paler and not green at all.

“You know,” she says, “I’ve been watching those videos we logged in Galar again.”

“Oh?” Bill asks, his voice a little raspier than he’d intended.

“Yeah.” 

Lanette scoots closer. Without thinking, Bill places his cup beside him and reaches up to grasp her other wrist. He winds his tail out from between them and loops it behind Lanette—not touching her at all. Just resting so that Lanette is sitting in a dragon’s circle on the floor.

“The one about which abilities you’d miss,” she says. Her head is bowed, but she speaks like she’s stating a fact, not reminiscing. “I was thinking about how you described flying.”

“Flying?”

“Yeah.” Her hand tightens around his wrist. “That was your favorite part, wasn’t it? You were talking about how free it was.”

“Ah.” Bill smiles. Eases into some warm feeling inside him. “Yes. It was. I was carrying you, but … Lanette, I can’t even describe it.”

Lanette leans forward and presses her forehead against his. “I get it. Think you can fly now?”

Bill snorts. “No. Maybe if I get a hold of this. Otherwise … you can imagine what would happen if my wings disappeared mid-flight.”

“Of course,” Lanette replies with a laugh.

“Oi, that’s not funny,” Bill replies, his voice a gentle tease. “Anyway … flying.”

Lanette shifts her head to look into his eyes. “But would you want to?”

Bill feels his smile shift into something wistful. “Are you kidding? Of course! I would give anything to fly like that again!” He leans into her a little. “You can come too, if you’d like. I promise.”

And she smiles but pulls away, holding onto his wrist gently. “Maybe. But hey. One step at a time, okay?”

“Huh?” He leans back. “Oh. If we must.”

“We must,” she says. And she stands up and steps back, taking the tablet with her. “By the way, good news.”

“Yes?”

She points at the floor around Bill with the hand holding the tablet. “Your tail’s gone.”

And as she walks away, Bill looks down. She’s right—it’s gone. His wings too, and his fingers have split into five. And as a blush spreads across Bill’s face, he swallows and realizes his senses have gone back to normal too, and he has a feeling he knows why.

“Huh,” he says to himself. “Well, I’ll be.”


	9. Bebe has an entire FOLDER of flygon memes by now.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  How long do you think it will take until people start tagging bill with random pictures of flygons saying “its you”

You say this as if Bebe hasn’t been sending me flygon memes since November.

* * *

> **ridragon asked:**  
>  Have you let your Pokemon *know* you can understand them? Or are you keeping it a secret so you can know what they say when they think you have no idea?

I’ve let the ones that roam about the Sea Cottage know, yes. In a sense, anyway. Primrose was there when I figured things out, and as such, she and Lanette’s clefairy were quite literally the first to know. Foxglove found out quickly afterwards, likely because of the spike in emotions I was experiencing. Lucky and Yew were the last to know, but they were both the only ones I actually _told_ in the traditional sense of the word.

Well, I haven’t told the eevee kits either, or any of the pokémon in the storage system. There’s really no reason for the latter, and with the former, I don’t want to make them think _all_ humans can understand them if the first one they meet can.


	10. Confession: I don't know what Lanette would've done if that had worked either.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  So when you say a few "remnants of being a flygon" remain but "nothing to worry about" does that mean that no one can put you into a pokeball? Since that would suck to remain. Would make it easy for someone to kidnap you after all.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  So Bill. Since you're slowly turning into a pokemon, does that mean you can be caught in a pokeball like one? If so, does being put in a pokeball halt the transformation process?

> **dzamie asked:**  
>  So, a pokeball worked on Flygon Bill during your trip, but not on pre-Flygon Bill. Do they work on him now?

….

You know, that is an excellent question. I don’t believe so. If a poké ball recognizes human genetic data, the capture net generally fails. So it would stand to reason that if I’m anything short of fully flygon at any given time, the ball would, indeed, fail.

* * *

Bill straightens up, placing his hands on his hips as the page reloads, one question shorter. He’s human now, and in fact, it’s the second day in a row he hasn’t experienced any changes. So that proves his first theory correct: it’s tied to his emotions.

But one question remains: can he make it stick one way or the other? Sure, he’s not the most emotionally volatile person out there, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t a myriad of emotions running just under the surface of whatever facade he’s put up at any given moment. The last thing he needs is to have a rash of scales break out across his skin when he’s trying to talk to his employers, his investors … Lanette.

He feels the tell-tale itch of scales across his face, and he closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and forces himself to find his center.

And then something whacks him in the back.

Bill yelps and whirls around, banging a pair of sprouting wings on his desk. Wincing, he leans against the desk and reaches behind him until his claws bump into something round and plastic.

“Really, Lanette?” he says, pulling the poké ball into view.

“Hey, it was an excellent question,” she replies. She swivels her chair back around and sends Bill’s post out to the public. “Anyway, it’s not like you to just spout theories without testing them, right?”

He toys with the poké ball, his claws poking at the button. “Point. Counterpoint: Did you just throw a poké ball at me for the fun of it?”

She looks over her shoulder. “What gave you that idea?”

“Because just as it’s unlike me to not test a theory thoroughly,” he says, pointing the claws holding the ball at her, “it’s unlike _you_ to test outlandish theories before I do.”

At that, she tilts her head just a little, and a ghost of a smile plays across her face. “Well. I have to admit, it’s a very interesting theory.”

Bill pauses, steadying his eyes on Lanette for a second. And then, he presses the button on the face of the poké ball.

A familiar flash of light floods his vision, and immediately afterwards, he slides into a state he knows all too well: weightless, senseless, timeless. He can hear Lanette’s voice, but he can’t see her, and he, for reasons he can’t put into words, has no desire to move towards her. So he sits until another light splits the first, and he finds himself flat on his back on the floor with Lanette standing over him. Her face is pale, and she holds a poké ball—his poké ball, he supposes—in one hand.

“I was just teasing you!” she squeaks.

And to that, he shrugs and rests a set of claws on his stomach. “New theory. There’s a threshold, and past that, the poké ball will work.”

She stares at him, prompting him to look her as closely as he can get to staring at her in the eye without picking his head up.

“That means I was wrong,” he says.


	11. And you thought you wouldn't need math after graduating.

> **dzamie:**  
>  The plot thickens. How Flygon was he when he pushed the button and when he came back out?

Well, the latter question is easy: the same as when I went in. I think one of you is correct in that the poké ball might have suspended my transformations, but I would need more time to really test this.

The more concerning part, though, is that I wasn’t particularly flygon-like. I had scales, wings, and claws, but otherwise, I looked fairly normal, as far as I could tell from the footage. Perhaps the threshold is about 75% human to 25% flygon, but I would need further testing, admittedly. I do know that the poké ball doesn’t seem to react to me when I’m fully human, but it does seem to react when I at least have scales.


	12. Awkward.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Bill, if you were successfully “caught” again as a hybrid, does that mean you’re Lanette’s Pokemon again NOW? Unless she smashes the ball?

Short answer? Yes.

Long answer? Yes, which is strange because technically, I was part human when I held that ball, so one would think I would be registered to myself. On the other hand, I was still part pokémon, and if a pokémon activates a poké ball by itself, then it will be registered by whichever human claimed its poké ball last. Perhaps the system didn’t recognize my human half when the capture happened and defaulted to the last full human that claimed my poké ball.

Either way, Lanette is certainly more awkward about this fact than I am.

* * *

Lanette picks her head up from her hand and glares over her shoulder at her partner.

“I’m ‘more awkward’ because it’s awkward, you know,” she says. “I agreed to putting you in a poké ball in Galar because you were a full-on six-foot-tall dragon and needed one just to get there, but now?” She rests her head on her hand again. “It’s weird.”

“How so?” Bill asks. He doesn’t bother turning around. He’s completely focused on the screen in front of him, and the way he responds to Lanette is casual, as if he literally can’t think of a single reason why technically being his best friend’s pokémon might be a weird experience.

Actually. Scratch that. Lanette knows he can’t think of a single reason why that would be weird.

So she takes a deep breath and tries to figure out how to explain this in as simple terms as possible.

“Because,” she says, “it’s just a little weird. You’re … you know. Human.”

“Ah,” Bill replies. Again, casually. Infuriatingly casually. “If it makes you feel better, you technically only own the flygon part of me. The ball doesn’t react to my human half.”

Lanette opens her mouth, but rather than speak, she exhales—long, slow, and exasperated. 

This is not a conversation she’s going to win, and she knows it.


	13. Hey, Bill, have you tried turning it off and on again?

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Have you tried to trade Bill the Pokeball with his Flygon dna in it? That might things less awkward. Or would Bill need to be out of the Pokeball for it to transfer to him and be in the Pokeball at the same time?

> **nt1274 asked:**  
>  can't Lanette just smash the pokeball like she did after you got back from galar?

**LH:** I would … _if Bill would give me his poké ball_.

* * *

Lanette looks up from her laptop and glances across the lab at Bill. She’s facing him this time, though her knees are still drawn to her chest, and she can’t decide whether she should be amused or concerned. Her partner is sitting in the center of the room, crosslegged … and perfectly human.

“You still doing okay there, Bill?” she asks.

He exhales the breath he was controlling carefully up until that point, then bows his head and speaks through gritted teeth. “Of all the times the shifting doesn’t happen, it’s when I actively _want_ it to.” He quickly checks his hands, then throws one of them in the air. “I’m even frustrated right now, and nothing!”

“Well, at least you’re getting in better touch with your emotions,” Lanette says, sinking firmly into the “concerned” category.

“I just don’t get it,” he says, worming his fingers through his hair. “What am I doing wrong?”

Lanette pauses, flicking her eyes away from Bill for a second to think. Namely, her mind flicks through two options. One has the potential to be extremely dangerous. The other, knowing Bill, would also … probably be dangerous.

“Why are you meditating if you’re trying to avoid calming yourself down?” she asks.

He freezes. Then looks back at Lanette, wide-eyed.


	14. If you make it past the first three paragraphs of this, then you deserve applause.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Is Bill willing to let Flygons be Flygons, or is he going to spend time dragon this thing into the ground? If the pokeball thing turns into a large-scale issue, he may have to wing it, and that's no tall tail. (Also, isn't owning humans against the claw?)

….

It may be against the _claw_ , anonymous, but to _Dig_ into it further, it’s not illegal to own a pokémon, nor does the poké ball necessarily mean I’m literally owned by Lanette. Of course, for one, I’m sure the question of whether I count as a human or a pokémon may be a complicated one, sure to cause quite the _Uproar_. Personally, as a scientist, I don’t mind, though, as this opportunity will surely answer many questions that have plagued mankind since our relationship with pokémon crawled forth through the _sands_ of time. As such, I prefer to be _Laser Focused_ on more important matters at hand. 

Well, that and I’m still quite independent, after all. I know Lanette is quite _Outraged_ , but our current relationship as pokémon and trainer is really only on paper. As I’ve said, she doesn’t actually own me; it’s simply that the ball binds us as partners in the same way a near-sapient pokémon such as kadabra can be partnered to a human. So don’t worry, readers. Our relationship isn’t _evolving_ into anything ethically dubious, and I only plan on _burying_ myself in this whole thing for long enough to answer a question or few.

* * *

Lanette shoots Bill another narrow-eyed glare, then reaches for the hammer resting on the desk next to her. “Give me your poké ball.”

He smiles. “No.”

* * *

> **dzamie asked:**  
>  Hopefully you can figure out how to at least handle the wings and tail. Might as well save Bill excessive clothing costs.

Ah, yes. I quite agree. I’m actually considering modifying my current clothing to add subtle wing and tail holes, but you have no idea how inconvenient it’s been thus far in that regard…

* * *

“That’s the only reason why it’s been inconvenient to you, isn’t it?” Lanette sighs.

“Look, that was my best waistcoat I ruined the other day,” Bill responds. He pauses, then looks over his shoulder. “Still nothing?!”

At that, Lanette exhales a very long, very patient breath.

* * *

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Bill, maybe you should just bite the proverbial bullet and combine yourself with a Ditto, then you can turn into whatever or whomever you want!

….

`Don’t even think about it. —LH`

* * *

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  so, is there something about flygon specifically that made it's traits resurface instead of the traits of clefairy, nidorano, rattata, etc?

It’s entirely due to the specific method I’ve combined myself with a pokémon this time. Whereas clefairy, nidorino, rattata, and so forth were combined with me, it’s more that flygon genetic material was _introduced_ to my system. In other words, while there were two beings to separate in all of those other instances, there’s only one here. Consequently, there’s simply more leftover genetic material in my system, and, well … it seems my computer is having trouble understanding how to pull it out.

As for why it’s activating after a month, I admit I’m not entirely certain, but my theory is that it’s like a fire. You have a small ember taking root at first, but if left unattended for too long, it simply … grows.

….

* * *

“Wait,” Lanette says, turning in her seat. “Does that mean you could turn back into a full flygon _permanently_?”

Bill gives her a smile. “No, of course not. Eventually, my system will simply … plateau, I suppose, because there’s too much human DNA here for my body to go that way.”

He says that, knowing full well that this is just a theory. But of course, he doesn’t tell her this.


	15. When life gives you lemons, something something burn life's house down.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Bill, did you ever work with a company called aperture science? The phrase "still alive" seems to have similar meaning and levels of ominousness coming from you and them - except they at least choose *other* people to be their test subjects and not themselves

**LH:** Luckily, he hasn’t, and the cake is not a lie. I’m glad for it too. The last thing Bill needs is for anyone to encourage him to make incendiary lemons or something.

Or a portal gun.

* * *

Lanette hits “PUBLISH” and leans back in her chair. She glances over to the table next to her and frowns. Bill’s queued up enough questions to cover everything that didn’t have to do with this whole mess, but she knew she’d have to answer these herself, or he would be encouraged to do something stupider and…

And it’s been two days. It’s been two days, and the Sea Cottage has been weirdly quiet without her partner. Oh, he wasn’t exactly gone. No, thanks to her stupid mouth going and telling him exactly how to trigger his transformations, he’s managed to turn flygon just enough to get his poké ball to respond to him.

“Okay, Lanette. I’m going in, and whatever you do, let me stay in there for three days,” he told her. “I want to see what the effects of staying in a ball for a prolonged time frame would be.”

And before she could protest, off he went. And now his poké ball is sitting on the kitchen table, where Lanette won’t lose it under a stack of papers, and her partner has been there ever since.

She could defy him, you know. She could ignore his orders and open his poké ball early. In fact, she reaches over and rests her hand on it, contemplating just how easy it would be to twitch her wrist and send that ball flying. But she doesn’t. She only sits back, easing her hand off the ball and resting it between her laptop and a cup of hot cocoa.

And that is their relationship. She thinks she’s stopping him from doing something stupid, but she really isn’t, and for the life of her, she can’t figure out why.

She just hopes that those effects Bill was talking about are negligible.


	16. Psyducks are a term of endearment, we swear.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Umm what did bill turn into this time?

**LH:** More of a reckless, self-destructive psyduck than usual.

* * *

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Bill? You’re scaring me, why couldn’t you turn into something cute like a Jolteon or vaporeon or flareon ?

**LH:** I have to admit, that one might be on me. I was the one who set up the polls where people could vote on what he wound up being. In an ideal world, he probably would have loved to be one of those things … but at least he isn’t a wailord. Like **_some_** of you wanted him to be.

* * *

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  when will bill finally evolve

**LH:** My first response to this is he already has. His human half can’t evolve (not in that sense, anyway), and his pokémon half has already evolved as far as it can go.

My second response is _don’t give him ideas._

* * *

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Bill, so uh... When are you going to realize your webcam is still going even now? It's been on since you got back from Galar, I think...

**LH:** If you want the truth, anonymous, he’s known for a while. He’s just turning it on now and then because he wants, and I quote, “to document everything we do and update our readers for the sake of posterity and science.”

The first time was an accident, though.

* * *

Her hand is back on the ball again. There are so many questions only Bill can ask right now, and of course he’s not even here to answer them. She really should just interrupt this experiment of his. It can’t be good. What if the ball locked him into one form? Can it even handle a being that can shapeshift even though its genetic code says it shouldn’t? Or worse—what if it destabilizes him?

No. She withdraws her hand and rests it on her cocoa instead. Trust Bill. He has no idea what he’s doing, but he…

Actually, she doesn’t know how to end that sentence. She just knows she should trust him.

* * *

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  If Bill is now a psyduck, does that mean he can breathe underwater? Imagine all the sunken treasures, seafood, and stuff he could find!

**LH:** Just so we’re clear, “psyduck” is a gentle, polite, affectionate, loving way of saying my partner has his head in the clouds. Often.

* * *

She has to admit, he’s a brilliant idiot, though. But just because he’s probably the most brilliant person she’s ever met doesn’t mean he has sense. She narrows her eyes and thinks hard about this to make a point, even though she knows damn well flygon aren’t telepathic.


	17. Bill, you have a wonderful sense of timing.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  LH, please give Bill nose boops for us when he goes flygon-y.

**LH:** Honestly, at this rate, I’ll give him more than nose boops.

…

Edit: That’s supposed to sound threatening.

* * *

Three days have come and gone, and the most Lanette has seen out of her partner was a quick “hello, I’m fine, but I think we should do this for a bit longer, just in case.” Which is to say that for the past two weeks, Bill had spent a grand total of ten minutes out of that poké ball, separated by days on end. It’s been a week and a half specifically so far, and Lanette is frankly getting worried.

She spends much of her time with the ball in view, waiting patiently as she works. It’s not like she can do much else, really. The Sea Cottage is spotless, so that rules out housework. The system is easy to maintain, and without her partner or her own lab, she can’t really start on anything new, which rules out actual work. She’s tried her hand at gardening, but Lucky mostly shoos her out of the garden, and frankly, cooking and baking can get a little boring a lot quickly if only pokémon are around to sample the results. That leaves lounging, playing with her pokémon, and stringing together the perfect plan to get that poké ball away from Bill the second he steps out of it. Preferably followed up by a choice set of words.

Lanette doesn’t expect much the night Bill finally comes out. She knows he’s bad with calendars, and anyway, his sense of time is very likely skewed in that ball of his. So when she hears it rattle, she looks up from her laptop and to the center of the kitchen table with a mix of relief and surprise—but mostly surprise. It rocks back and forth for a second, jerking across the table in short, impatient bursts. Lanette hesitates, glancing towards the corner of the room, where Foxglove, her only company for the moment, sits in shared expectation. And in that moment, as she and the kadabra exchange glances, Lanette wonders if she should reach out to help or if this was something Foxglove’s owner needed to figure out on his own, when the ball begins to roll towards the edge of the table. Instantly, Lanette breaks contact with Foxglove to reach out and grab the ball, and when she does, it clicks open in her hand. She flinches, aiming it to a spot away from her.

There’s a bang and a flash of light, and all of a sudden, for the first time in days, there’s a Bill.

Bill lays on his back, hands above his head, tail tangled around his feet. He looks up at Lanette. She looks back at him.

And the first thing she does is take his ball and throw it to Foxglove, who grabs it and instantly vanishes. Sitting back down, she looks at Bill, who in turn looks from the newly emptied spot back to Lanette.

“What did you do that for?” he asks.

Lanette reaches for her cocoa—calmly, waiting for him to ask. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches Bill sit up and rub the back of his head. His tail sways behind him, adjusting to free itself from his weight.

“Mm. Blazes, I feel stiff,” he mutters. “How long has it been?”

“Almost two weeks,” Lanette replies.

“Really?” Bill stands and sways on his feet. “Huh. It only felt like a few hours.”

“Of course,” Lanette replies. She takes a sip of cold cocoa, briefly weighs whether or not she should tell him, and decides to do it anyway. “It’s the fourteenth.”

“And I went in on the—what was it?”

“The third,” Lanette replies. “And before that, the first.”

“Right. Right.” Bill stretches, then walks to the cabinets. He pulls out a glass and begins to fill it with water as he continues, “I’ll have to track down Foxglove later and try to find my poké ball. In the meantime, I don’t feel any major differences, other than some stiffness. Note that down, if you’d please. I’ll wait until it subsides before trying to return to fully human, but in the mean—”

His voice cuts off so abruptly Lanette has to look up. His head had shot up, and now, he’s standing perfectly, utterly, stock still. Whirling around, he furrows his eyebrows at her.

“It’s the fourteenth,” he says.

Lanette picks up her cup. She tries not to smile.

“Yes,” she says.

“Of February,” he adds.

“Yes,” she replies.

He squints and slowly puts it together. “Valentine’s Day?”

“Yes.” And it takes Lanette even more effort to avoid smiling.

Bill looks at her sideways, then holds up a claw. After another second, he points it to the door.

“I’ll be right back,” he says.

And as Lanette watches him rush out of the room, she swirls her cocoa in thought. Huh. He actually figured it out. Maybe there’s hope for him after all.


	18. Johto Man gains powers through questionable science

> **mushroomfusion245 asked:**  
>  Are you sure being hurt by Moonblast isn’t just a side effect of you being part Dragon type?

Positive. That was back before I’d run the experiment with flygon DNA.

Actually, now that you mention it, it was _after_ I’d run the experiment with a nidorino test subject, so there’s a good chance that my reaction to fairy energies was _dulled_ back then.

….

At this point, I should perhaps reiterate that I’m a trained professional and that I’m obligated both morally and legally to discourage you from replicating any of my experiments. In other words, don’t try this at home.

* * *

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  You think that's bad? Well, you know the one about Vivax Man snorting human and Pokemon ashes? It gave him superpowers. We don't know how either.

….

On the one hand, it would be rather tasteless of a person to snort the remains of a pokémon.

On the other…

`**_No._** —LH`

* * *

> **dzamie:**  
>  Bill, you’re already superhuman.

I mean. I wouldn’t be opposed to adding more abilities to myself.

`First off, no. Second, if I didn’t know you’re only saying this out of scientific curiosity and just a little bit because of your not-so-secret fondness for comic books, I’d be concerned about that statement. —LH`

`Hmm? Why? —Bill`

`For the same reason that it’s generally a bad idea to really want to summon legendary pokémon for reasons other than scientific curiosity. —LH`


	19. In which Bill constitutes a one-man fire hazard.

> **dzamie asked:**  
>  How much Flygon does Bill have to be to use moves (assuming he still can)? It's kinda funny to picture human Bill using Dragon Breath, but I reckon that's not the case.

Shockingly, not much at all. It seems that so long as I have an analogous body part to use such a move, I can, well … use that move. (For example, I can easily use Dragon Claw because I have hands. I can’t use Dragon Tail if I don’t have a tail … supposedly, anyway. I now regret not having taught myself Dragon Tail to test this.) The only difference is that my abilities grow notably weaker the more human I am.

My theory is that the elemental energies I control as a flygon don’t really go away once I take on a more human form. It would make sense, anyway, given that elemental energies don’t cease to exist once a pokémon transitions from one form to another via evolution, although I suppose they do in a way for _forms_ such as in the case of rotom, and…

Well. It’s a bit complicated, I suppose.

* * *

Imagine this: Bill stands in his kitchen, leaning against the table. In his left hand is a cup of coffee.

Normal enough? Great. Now set his right hand on fire, and you’ll have Lanette’s afternoon so far.

She sits at the table adjacent to her partner, pretending like her attention hasn’t wavered from the maintenance reports she’s going over and certainly not to the glove of violet flames currently surrounding her partner’s hand. She is certainly not watching him warily as he wiggles his fingers, as the Dragon Claw responds like it’s an extension of him. Nope. This is completely normal and something that will definitely not end in disaster.

“You know,” he says, “it’s weird that I can do this.”

Lanette forces her eyes back to the laptop. “It’s weird that you don’t think that’s a hazard.”

“What? This?” Bill glances over to Lanette. “Come on, Lanette. How is it a hazard?”

Now that he thinks she hasn’t been staring at him, she hazards a look. A mildly judgmental look, with only a quirked eyebrow to betray just how much she’s judging him for thinking it’s not dangerous to light his hand on fire with his thoughts.

“Bill, your hand is on _fire_ ,” she says.

“It doesn’t hurt, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He pauses. “Though it tingles a little.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then…?”

“How much of the Sea Cottage is made of wood?”

Bill smiles and rolls his eyes, as if to give her a “don’t be ridiculous” in as friendly a manner as possible. “Lanette, this place has survived typhoons, earthquakes, and a giant dragonite. I think it can survive a little bit of dragon fire. Besides, we both know dragon fire behaves differently than the other sort. Still, if it would help at all…” He curls his hand into a fist, snuffing out the fire. “There. Completely under control.”

Lanette watches Bill place his right hand on the table. He leans against it, but her eyes are firmly on that hand, as if waiting for what she’s pretty sure is inevitable.

“Just like you had your transformations under control?” she asks.

“That was different,” he responds. “And I’m getting better. I haven’t had an incident in over a week.”

“Uh huh.”

Bill downs the rest of his coffee and places his cup on the table behind him. “Come now, Lanette. I promise you I’ll be responsible with this. Everything will be fine, and you don’t have to worry. You’re safe.”

A frown creases Lanette’s face, and her fingers begin flying across her keyboard. “It’s not my safety I’m worried about.”

“Then what’s on your mind? You can tell me.”

Her partner flexes his left hand now, eyes intently on it. She spies this gesture out of the corner of her eye and immediately sweeps her laptop off the table. Just as soon as she does, blue fire erupts from Bill’s right hand and rushes across the surface of the very wooden table, forcing Lanette to start, grab her laptop, and jump up from the table. The burning wood breaks off under his weight and sends him crashing backwards into it. His left grips the edge of the table just fine, but the right cracks against the table and sends fire across its table again, this time splitting it neatly in half. Lanette calmly from the corner of the kitchen as her partner spills backwards, onto his back and onto the floor between both halves of the table. When she looks down, she isn’t surprised to see a half-flygon lying there, wincing as he holds his now-extinguished hand aloft.

“Okay,” he says. “Point taken.”


	20. "Bill, remember that last time I enabled you, and you wound up with uncontrollable powers? No? Okay."

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Don't worry, Bill! I know it's frustrating now, but I'm sure eventually you'll get the hang of this shifting and these abilities! I bet it's like any kind of skill--you start our terrible with no idea what you're doing and you fail a lot and learn from that until you figure out what you're doing! Like a baby can't walk, they gotta fall on their face a lot until they learn how to stay upright! If you keep trying eventually I'm sure you'll figure out this weird stuff that's happening!

Thank you, anonymous! This is a wonderful, encouraging sentiment!

It’s also imperative that I do, as I feel like my partner will recall me and deposit me into the system if I don’t.

(I’m kidding, of course, but—)

…

Wait a second.

* * *

Bill looks over to Lanette. “What do you think about—”

“Before you even finish that sentence,” Lanette says, “no, I am not recalling you and depositing you into the system, for science or otherwise.”

Bill nods, sets down his phone, and resumes cleaning up the kitchen floor. “Okay.”


	21. Imagine kitten videos, but instead of kittens, it's trapinch.

> **smartguy18 asked:**  
>  Hey Bill! Since ur half Flygon now, do u have somewhat more passionate to Trapinch and Vibrava? Maybe like emotionally or ur behaviour towards them since u hv these Flygon instinct? My friend really eager to know since he studies Flygon behaviour in Castelia City University. Don't worry this ask is purely for academic purposes... XD

You know … I’m not sure. I don’t _feel_ any different towards trapinch—or, rather, perhaps I’d like to have one on my team now, but … hmm.

I wouldn’t say I had any gripping need to be around them, let’s just say. It makes sense, though—flygon are solitary hunters, after all.

* * *

Here is what Bill looks like right now: perfectly normal, except the claws and a tail. He could not have claws and a tail right now; he’s gotten far better at control in the past few months. But he has claws and a tail because of course he does.

Lanette has gotten used to this by now. It’s been several months since they’d come back from Galar, yet she’s still there, and she’s running out of excuses why. Not that Bill has ever asked her for one. He seems perfectly content letting her stay in the Sea Cottage for as long as she wants, though she’s not sure if he would ever voice otherwise. But the point is she wants an excuse for herself, and frankly, it’s getting harder and harder to think of one.

Oh, there’s still the big one that’s actually solidly true: she has no idea what this whole half-pokémon business means for Bill. Humans weren’t meant to change their forms at all, let alone so frequently, and although flygon are the end stage of an evolutionary line and thus prone to changing forms in order to reach that elusive final stage, they tend to stay there. But Bill is something that’s unstable—not quite either and therefore not quite settled one way or the other. So of course she worries. How does this shapeshifting work? What is it doing to him on a genetic level? Will there be a risk that he gets stuck one way or another? She needs to know more, but the problem is, well, Bill himself.

It’s not that he’s not curious either. Actually, he is. She’s found his notes (not that she’s ready to admit she’s been snooping through his data), and true enough, he’s been studying himself on his own. But for some reason, he’s not letting her in on that—her, the one with the expertise in pokémon form changing and genetics.

She’ll have to figure something out.

For now, she sighs at his recent response, then smirks.

“No gripping need? No fascination whatsoever?” she asks.

“Hmm?” He glances over his shoulder at her, seated across the lab from him. “What do you mean?”

She quirks an eyebrow in response, then taps a few keys and sends an email. A few moments later, she hears the sounds of the thing she sent him emanating from his computer. A happy jingle, overlaid with the equally happy chirps of the pet trapinch in an entire compilation video of pet trapinch being cute. Swiveling around in her chair, she watches as her partner sits with his eyes glued to the screen, tail wagging lazily in the air and a loud purr rumbling from his throat.

That would be the other reason why Lanette is here—the one she certainly wouldn’t tell Bill. Sure, his situation is worrying, but she has to admit … it’s a little cute.


	22. Didn't think that one through, to be honest.

> **dzamie asked:**  
>  Do you actually have Levitate right now (like you joked in that ask a bit back), like as a hybrid? How does that manifest?

_[BEGIN TRANSMISSION]_

_[BILL’s laboratory. A space is cleared out in the center—or at least, said space is visible as soon as BILL sets up the camera and backs away. It should be noted he looks completely normal, save for the remaining claws and tail.]_

**BILL:**  
I thought it might be easier to show you. It’s quite simple, really.

_[A pair of wings suddenly burst from his back. He flaps them and lifts off the ground, then hovers there, leaning back in mid-air.]_

**BILL:**  
I don’t even really need to be flapping them, to be honest. I just need to have them, and apparently, I can do this. Thus, Levitate.

**LH, off camera:**  
So … what happens if you don’t have them?

**BILL:**  
Well, that’s also simple. You see—

_[He retracts his wings and immediately drops out of the air and onto his back. There’s a long moment of silence before he raises a hand, claw pointed to the ceiling.]_

**BILL:**  
I meant to do that.

_[END TRANSMISSION]_

**Editorial Note:** Evidently, Levitate only works so long as Bill is at least partially visibly flygon. Anything less, and ground-type attacks affect him as they usually would a human being.


	23. Bill's just *prying* open those cans of worms.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  I'm sure with some modifications you could change the threshold on a pokeball

I certainly could, but…

* * *

Bill leans back in his chair, his claws tapping on the keys. He lifts his eyes to the ceiling and thinks for a long while, then purses his lips.

“You know,” he says, “I can’t think of a reason why not.”

Instantly, Lanette is by his side. Part of him is startled by how quickly she’s materialized, but he also knows her well. She adjusts her glasses and squints at him, as if that is warning enough. (Oh, it’s a warning all right, but since when has Bill ever paid attention when other people warn him about things?)

“Why not what?” she asks. Judging from her tone, she is not curious.

Bill decides, as always, to play the innocent card, and he gestures to the screen as if he’s completely incapable of figuring out why she might think of this as a bad idea too. (He knows. He just plays it otherwise because there’s a 50% chance he can weasel his way into doing the thing for science anyway and a 50% chance that, if failing the previously mentioned route, Lanette wouldn’t give him a lecture on safety, ethics, and experimentation. He knows; he knows. It’s just that he doesn’t get why anyone else would have any sort of limitation to their curiosity. Or, at least, death is a fair enough limitation, but anything short of that is fine, right?)

“Why not modify the species detection threshold so a poké ball would be able to recall me, even if I’m as human as I can make myself be,” he explains, simply and nonchalantly.

She raises an eyebrow at him, then sighs and grabs his poké ball from the desk.

Oh. There was a third option. As Lanette slinks back to her side of the lab, Bill makes a mental note of surveying all possible options next time around, rather than the two most obvious ones.

For now, he gets up and starts towards her. Maybe if he distracted her, he could…

“Lanette,” he says, “I’ve been wondering. It’s been a few months.”

She flinches. It’s subtle, like she’s trying to hide it, but Bill’s senses are a little sharper. Or his instincts are a little finer. Whatever it is, the point is, he’s finding it easier and easier to detect the slightest movement. It makes sense; flygon need to detect the slightest movement of the tiniest prey in a full-on sandstorm.

“Yes?” she says. Her voice is a little softer too—just a half-step softer than usual, he figures.

He switches his tail. Hunter’s excitement, perhaps? He’s not completely conscious of it, anyway. But the ball is right there, right beside Lanette’s hand, and every sense he’s got feels like it’s hyper-focused on her, as if some part of his brain is trying to figure out which way she’ll bolt. He almost lets himself get distracted by the sensation, but…

Right. Focus. He slowly reaches for the ball.

“Why _have_ you extended your stay this long?” he asks. “Not that I mind, of course. I’m just … curious.”

His hand gets halfway to the ball before hers snaps over it. She turns in her seat and smiles sweetly at him.

“And I’m just curious why you have claws and a tail right now,” she says.

Touché.


	24. Man, I can't think of a joke when Bill gets real like this. :(

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Bill, you seem to be handling this flygon situation quite well, I think if it had been me transformed I’d still be locked up in my room panicking. How are you able to remain so calm about this?

This is something Lanette asks me from time to time. You would think the answer is “I’ve done this before,” but I admit I was probably calmer than most people would be the first time around too. For that matter, the answer is certainly not “because I like pokémon” or “I was curious about what it’d be like as a pokémon,” contrary to popular belief.

The _real_ answer is, strangely, a combination of how I view my identity and my curiosity. For the latter, it’s not specifically about pokémon but rather a sort of _need to learn_ , really. I suppose you could say I’m always hungry for new experiences, so what better way to satisfy that than through completely different eyes now and then? It’s a great way to completely reinvent your perspective on things, at least.

As for the former … I suppose to put it as simply as possible, I never really linked my identity to my physical form. The way I see it, who I am doesn’t have anything to do with _what_ I am; everything that’s me is just in my mind. Everything else is simply shifts in perspective.

Granted, I _do_ understand the entire concept (or is it trope, perhaps?) of “the mind is a plaything of the body.” Having experimented with costumes (and, well, having experienced life as an actual pokémon), I can tell you that instincts are indeed powerful, and when you see the world from the perspective of a rattata, it’s hard _not_ to think a little differently than you usually do. The key, really, is to take notice of the moments where you think more pokémon-like than you usually would, take a deep breath, center yourself, and then … lean into it as an experience a little. So long as you view it as an experience instead of as a thought of your own, you’re essentially safe.

In short, I suppose you could say that the reason why I don’t really panic is just because I don’t really have a need to. For the most part, I view it as an opportunity to learn more about the world, and on top of that, I know myself well enough to stay myself, no matter what form I take and how long I spend as something else.

Am I ever afraid of the prospect of losing my human form completely? A bit. The first time especially, I wasn’t sure if the cell separation system would actually work. To be honest, I’m not sure what I’d do if I couldn’t turn back to my usual self. I’d probably simply adapt, truth be told. Our world is stocked full of unusual sights and creatures as it is. I doubt anyone would be shocked if there was one more.

`I’ve asked several times before, but I’m asking now because you’ll need to cover your bases here. What about your family? Wouldn’t they think it’s weird that you’d be a pokémon? —LH`

`My siblings? Yes. My mother and grandfather are shockingly accepting, so no. And my father … well, I haven’t cared about his opinions about me since I was twelve, so why start now? —Bill`

`…. —LH`


	25. Back to your regularly scheduled drama!

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  What would happen if you were to procriate in this half pokemon form? Would your child be born with flygon features?

….

Ah, to be frank, I’m not sure what exactly would happen for a few reasons.

First, as far as I can tell, though I may look human (most of the time), my genetic code isn’t compatible with that of humans. That is to say, I very likely _can’t_ have children.

Second, on the off-chance that I _do_ manage to procreate, the end result would very likely be … horrific. Either the child would be incompatible with life, or it would do serious harm to the mother.

Third, even if I had some sort of guarantee that experimenting wouldn’t harm my partner, I very much lack the interest in conducting those experiments, sad to say.

* * *

Bill leans back in his chair, his fingertips gripping the edge of his desk. He exhales slowly through his nose and closes his eyes. Then, slowly, he searches his mind for a suitable diversion from … that. He sinks down in his head, reaching that clear point where he can practically feel the heat of the dragonfire within him, and then, when he can just about feel it in his core, he pulls.

His eyes flutter open—just open, enough for him to watch his arms. The first scales emerge by his wrists, followed quickly by a rush of scales climbing up his arms. His fingernails turn pale and lengthen, he feels his palms thicken, and—

A hand rests on his shoulder.

“Hey, are you okay?”

He jumps in his seat. He doesn’t mean to, and he normally wouldn’t, but the touch snaps him out of his trance too abruptly. By then, the dragonfire is too close to the surface, and he can feel it rush into his throat and across his skin. He quickly covers his mouth and swallows what feels like a Dragon Breath, but that distracts him just enough for his body to slip away from his control. Kicking his chair back, Bill drops to the floor and changes, letting the power of his dragon half rush out in a light that sets his bones on fire.

When he loses control like that, he’s never fully aware of how long it takes, but he’s watched enough of his own research logs to know that the change never hurts anyone or anything but, well, himself. That knowledge is especially a relief now, when the heat and rush fade away and when he opens his eyes to a grayscale world … and to Lanette’s face swimming above his.

“Well, that’s a no,” she says.

He sucks in a breath through his teeth—which are further from the rest of his face than a moment ago—and flops over on his bare stomach to pick himself up. His three-clawed hand grasps for his head, and it takes Lanette’s guidance to help him find it, far above where he was expecting.

“I’m so sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to scare you this badly.”

“You didn’t,” he replies. “Ow … how far have I shifted this time?”

“You’re … well, all the way,” she tells him.

He picks himself up and looks down, and sure enough, Lanette is right. He’s looking at the body of a complete flygon.

“Ah. Right. Sorry. Hold on—let me change back.”

In theory, if Bill has figured out a problem, he should be able to fix it, right? He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in.

“Um, if you don’t mind me asking, before you changed, you seemed a little disturbed by something,” Lanette says. “Do you need to talk?”

The problem with this form, as Bill learned early on, is that the dragonfire that’s tied to it can be a little difficult to maintain. It’s a pokémon of its own, after all—an echo of a flygon. It doesn’t quite have a mind of its own, but if Bill isn’t completely focused at this stage, if he isn’t gripping his own humanity with both hands when he’s in that form, then it can be … unpredictable. In that moment, the dragonfire bubbles in his chest. His heart lurches, and his mind snaps away from the arduous task of pulling the flames back in. In short, he feels himself jolt out of his trance and away from the act of transforming back. Flicking his eyes open, he forces his flygon face to give Lanette as genuine a grin as he can muster as his claws grip the desk.

“Uh … no! No, I’m fine,” he says. Lies, really, and it feels just as unnatural to do to her as speaking itself with that dragon’s muzzle.

Lanette, having just righted his chair, gives him a concerned look and peers at his computer.

“Is it something to do with the blog?” she asks.

He flicks one of his wings out to block her view of his monitor.

“No!” he says. Then, catching himself, he clears his throat into one of his curled claws. “Uh, no. It’s just some silly question. That’s all.”

“Bill,” Lanette says. She gently grasps the edge of his wing and pulls it down. “Let me just summarize what happened from my perspective. You were writing an answer to one of these asks, and whatever you were writing seems to have stressed you out because you were either undergoing breathing exercises afterwards or transforming to let off steam, as you’ve been doing lately with an uncomfortably increasing frequency if you ask me. Then when I came along to check on you, I startled you—which is not something that just anyone can do, by the way—and you end up as a full flygon. Something’s wrong, and if there’s anything I can do to help, I—”

Really, Bill gave up on keeping the question from her halfway through her summary, but only now does she push his wing down enough to see what was on his screen. She reads his response, then stands there, quietly gripping the edge of his wing.

He doesn’t know why he didn’t want her to see it. She knows how he feels, but something about the idea of her, specifically, reading this answer sent a wave of nausea through him before he’d transformed and leaves him cold now. Something in him feels like it’s speaking to him, like it’s telling him something about the two of them that he can’t quite understand yet. All he knows is that it’s insistent—insistent that he stays with her, that he protects her, that he needs to be her pokémon. He’d always get an undercurrent of this whenever he took on flygon traits—that’s what drove him to do it now, really—but when he’s full-on, that voice in him feels stronger and makes it harder to work his way back to human form.

Shuddering, Bill pulls away from his desk, carefully navigating his wing over Lanette’s head. He pushes off the floor and glides to the staircase out of the lab before she can stop him.

“I’m fine,” he says.

“Wait!” Lanette calls. “Where are you going?”

He grasps the railing and glances back, and as best as he can, he forces the dragonfire back down just enough to afford her a genuine smile this time.

“I just need some fresh air. That’s all,” he tells her.

He turns again to leave, and as he ascends the stairs, he can hear her sigh and his mouse click.

He really doesn’t want to lie to her, but he’s afraid of why his readers are asking, of what that voice in him is saying, of what all of this means.


	26. Honestly? Foxglove listens to Lanette more than Bill.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  I'm imagining your ability to go into a pokeball might be life-saving at times

That’s a fascinating thought, anonymous. No doubt it will come in handy at one point or another.

* * *

Fun fact: Lanette has spent enough time with Bill to mimic his writing style. Second fun fact: She feels really guilty about using this knack to lie to his readers.

Still, the reader has a point. She picks up Bill’s poké ball, then glances from it to the monitor. What’s gotten him so worked up about being asked a sex question? She knows Bill. She knows he’s not interested in that sort of thing. Despite all of his scientific curiosity, he’s uncomfortable with the idea of interacting with another person that way. He’s done it before, and she knows this, but he’s right. It’s too risky, and … well, he’s already satisfied his curiosity about that.

Or so she tells herself that. She can’t figure out what it is that’s freaked him out, after all. Unless…

He looked so shocked when he transformed—so _off_ somehow. Like it wasn’t even Bill she was looking at for that brief second.

She climbs the stairs, slowly enough to give Bill a head start on whatever he’s doing. Something is wrong, and he won’t tell her—which isn’t unusual, sure, but she wonders. What if he wasn’t telling her the truth, back when he insisted he wouldn’t go full-on flygon, inside as well as out? What if this is him losing his grip on things? He’s been tinkering with this for too long, switching back and forth between forms, and Lanette can’t help but think of the story of Icarus. Too curious, too close to something inhuman.

When she reaches the top of the stairs, she’s fully realized she can’t approach him on her own. He’ll deny it. She needs backup.

“Foxglove?” she calls out to the open room.

The kadabra is by her side instantly. He isn’t hers, but she’s close enough. In some ways, Lanette thinks with more than a little gratitude, Foxglove listens to her more than his actual trainer.

“Hey,” she says. “Does Bill seem off to you?”

Foxglove tilts his head for a second, then huffs and spreads a hand out to the doors. They swing open with a mechanical whirr, letting a cold sea breeze into the Sea Cottage. Lanette shivers and instantly wonders why she hadn’t felt the door open if Bill is, as his kadabra implies, outside.

_Window._ Foxglove’s “voice” sounds too much like a cross between a fox’s growl and Bill’s for Lanette’s comfort. That’s always shaken her, but it especially does now. Foxglove, seemingly uninterested in Lanette’s discomfort, extends a claw to the outside and adds two simple words: _And yes._

Lanette clears her throat and presses the poké ball to her chest. And yes. And yes, something is wrong. She walks out of the Sea Cottage and squints into the bright sunlight, and as her vision resolves, she spots a speck of green flowing through the air and coming to rest on the beach in the distance. Bill. He’d been flying. She looks to Foxglove, who doesn’t offer to teleport her down. Really, she wasn’t fully expecting him to, and she was, just a little, grateful that he didn’t. Instead, they walk—or, rather, she walks, and he floats beside her—down the road away from the lighthouse and to the beach and across the sand to the flygon at the other end.

It takes them nearly a half an hour to make the trip, and when they arrive, Lanette is surprised by two things. One, Bill is still a flygon. Two, he’s not even hiding the look of panic on his face when he notices she and his kadabra are there.

“Ah,” he says. “Lanette, I…”

“What’s going on?” she asks, as gently as she can. She’s starting to feel a little more than uneasy too.

“Well, ah…”

His eyes flick to Foxglove’s, as if to confirm that he can’t, in fact, lie at the moment. Then, he takes a deep, steadying breath, and looks back at Lanette.

“I’m having trouble turning back,” he admits. “As in … I can’t.”


	27. Foxglove is going to make Bill share his feelings, or *so help him*...

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Have you considered trying the effects of other pokemon specific devices, such as a ranger’s capture styler?

**LH:** At this point, I feel like using a capture styler or even a leash might be a better choice than a poké ball, for various reasons.

But anyway, it’s probably best _not_ to give Bill ideas at the moment.

* * *

Bill watches Lanette type that last line on her phone after some hesitation, then pulls his head away from its position looking over her shoulder. He sits, back-to-back with her with his tail wound around her waist and Foxglove meditating by their side. He hadn’t said much since revealing his difficulty reverting to his usual form, and she has been eerily silent. He’d been expecting something from her—a lecture, use of the poké ball he can sense on her, even her pressing him further on why he can’t transform back. But she didn’t do any of these things. She simply patted him on the shoulder, then sat down beside him. It was as if she was waiting for something.

_She is,_ Foxglove says. His voice is clearer to Bill than to Lanette, and it sounds thoroughly indescribable. A fox’s growl, someone Bill had never met, a little bit of Lanette’s lilt. It’s always been a comfort for him but not now. He wonders if that’s because he’s part pokémon .

Foxglove opens his hands, palms out to Bill. His spoon floats in front of them, then angles itself towards Bill … then shoots directly at him, hitting him in the head with a thwack. Bill yelps and grips his forehead with both claws, causing Lanette to twist around in her seat.

“What happened?!” she asks. “Are you okay?!”

Her frantic tone triggers something in Bill. He feels the dragonfire inside him rise up, threatening to flood his heart and grip his brain. Its voice echoes over and over in his head. Protect her. Protect her. She’s scared. She’s upset. She’s your partner. Protect her.

_Not now,_ he thinks. _Calm down._

_Focus. She’s waiting for an answer. Answer her,_ Foxglove says.

Bill winces. As always, Foxglove is right. Taking a breath, Bill tightens his tail’s grip on Lanette and glances over his shoulder with a smile.

“Perfectly fine!” he says.

The spoon hits him in the side of the head this time, and he whips around to glare at Foxglove. Lanette sighs and shifts to lean against Bill’s side. She grabs Foxglove’s spoon before the kadabra can turn it against his owner again, and she uses it to draw spirals in the sand.

“Clearly not,” she says. “Can you tell me what about that post triggered you?”

Bill straightens. “What post?”

“The one about what would happen if you tried to mate,” Lanette says, matter-of-factly. “It’s a valid question, from a scientific perspective. You haven’t even addressed that possibility until now, and we both know that you have no evidence that anything that grisly would happen if you managed to do it. In fact, your first suggestion about incompatibility is one of the two most likely scenarios. The other possibility is a baby that’s mostly human with very slight trapinch traits, as the child in question would be three-fourths human itself. Alternatively, the baby could be human if you fathered it while human, or the fetus would simply be miscarried due to carrying a genetic code that renders it incompatible with life. There’s yet another possibility, in which you tried to father a child while partly or mostly flygon, but having studied your anatomy as best as I could without asking you to outright strip, I doubt you’d be—”

“As scientifically fascinating as this discussion is,” Bill interrupts, “wouldn’t you think that’s enough talk about private matters, perhaps?”

“That’s a shame. I was about to get into the finer differences between the human and flygon—what?”

“You’ve given quite a lot of thought to this.”

Lanette smirks and elbows her partner in the ribs. “Get your mind out of the gutter. Contrary to what you might think, I’m just as fascinated by this as you are.” Her smile vanishes. “But … I’m worried about you. I can’t lie about that. Something’s been up with you lately. Your responses have been shorter than usual, and, well…” She eyes him carefully. “What were you doing playing with your powers again?”

Bill’s claws travel from his forehead to the back of his neck. He doesn’t respond.

“You still haven’t figured it out, have you?” Lanette asks.

“Figured what out?”

Lanette gently grabs one of Bill’s claws and coaxes it down to rest at his side.

“You told me about it, remember? When we came back from Galar,” she says. “You said something about not knowing what this feeling you’re experiencing actually means. You’re still struggling with that, aren’t you?”

“Lanette…” Bill lowers his head. “It’s been half a year, and you haven’t gone back to Hoenn.”

“Because I’m worried about you!” Lanette shouts. When Bill flinches, she sighs and shakes her head. “I realize I keep saying this, but we don’t know anything about what you’re going through, and you’re talking about it as if it’s some new adventure and not, you know. Your body. You promised me you wouldn’t be experimenting on yourself again.”

Lanette pulls her knees to her chest and wraps her arms around her legs. She props her chin on a knee and stares out, across the ocean and to the setting sun, and suddenly, Bill feels very, _very_ guilty. Or, at least, he does between moments of the voice insisting he do everything he can to calm her.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m just afraid of losing you. Before this week, I was just afraid that you’d go off and run an experiment, destabilize your body, and just … die. Now I’m afraid that you’re turning more and more into a flygon mentally.”

She’s sad now. Bill can feel it—can see it in her face—and the dragon in him is practically growling. Do something. Help her. And then, something untranslatable and coated in fire and frustration. Bill takes another steadying breath, forcing the dragonfire back down.

“Sorry,” Lanette says. She stands up and drops Foxglove’s spoon. “I’m making this about me. I can’t help it. I just … please tell me what’s going on.”

Bill has managed to wrangle the dragonfire, but something about it sticks out in his mind—his human mind, this time. His eyes shift to the side, then to Foxglove, then to the sky. The dragonfire was right, in a way. He needs to do something. Something that will put Lanette at ease.

He shoots to his feet, shouldering Lanette onto his back.

“Hold on,” he tells her, and this is her only warning before he takes off.

Bill’s not a complete idiot, of course. He winds his arms around her legs and pins her to his back as best as he can as he climbs into the sky. But he definitely ignores her scream of surprise.

“Bill, what are you doing?!” Lanette cries. Her arms are wound around his neck and shoulders. Good.

He evens out, and the ocean spreads out beneath them, glittering and deep blue in the pink evening sun.

“I thought you enjoyed flying,” he says.

“Yeah, but…” He feels Lanette adjust her glasses. “Bill, will you just talk to me like a reasonable human being?!”

He stops. He’s hovering far above the ocean now, with the lighthouse a speck on the horizon and the beach a ribbon far below.

“Open your eyes,” he says gently.

She doesn’t move, but he can feel her arms relax a little. She’s not gripping him like her life depended on it anymore, but rather with a firm grip to keep herself steady. Bill lifts his head and gives the sky an indignant frown.

“To answer that question properly,” he says, “I’ve thought about testing the capture stylus on myself, but sadly, that technology isn’t readily available. Still, we know how they work, and at most, my flygon side would respond to the light from them the way most pokémon would: dazzled to the point of wanting to befriend its source. A leash, however … _honestly,_ Lanette.”

“You didn’t bring me up here to talk about ways to contain you,” she deadpans.

“No,” he admits. “I didn’t. I brought you up here to talk.”

She shifts, struggling to sit up on his back. “So? Let’s talk.”

Bill exhales slowly. How is he supposed to tell her that she’s figured out the secret to how all these capture devices work? The secret to catching a pokémon without tech at all? You know—all those clichés about catching the heart? Or, at least, how does he explain that without sounding like a complete idiot, even though he’s pretty sure that’s exactly what happened, and also, how does he explain that the reason why he reacted the way he did to that ask was because he couldn’t stop imagining her as the test subject to those mating experiments?

“Bill?” she asks.

He shudders.

“Right,” he says. “Right. Let’s talk.”


	28. Click here if you like shippy stuff.

“So,” Lanette says. “Let’s talk.”

She says this after about ten minutes of eerie silence. As in, _immediately_ after he proposed to talk, he just went … dead silent. Lanette can feel his scales grow hot beneath her hands, and she’s worried. She can’t tell if he’s sick, getting exhausted from flying for so long, about to transform back, or something else, and given that half of those possibilities involve plunging them both into the ocean, she looks back at the beach with concern.

“Maybe we should land,” she says.

“No,” Bill replies. 

His voice is sharper than it’s been in a while—the kind of tone he only reserves at the Institute, when he’s arguing with higher-ups threatening to cut their funding. It’s not angry. It’s firm. Assertive. A “sit up and listen because I have something to say” kind of tone. Lanette has always been fascinated by that tone because Bill when he’s fully lucid and about to talk business is something that’s rare and a show to watch, but in that moment, when it’s used against her, it’s … not.

And it’s not because now more than ever, Lanette knows that whatever is about to come after will be hard. She just can’t tell if it’ll be hard for her to hear or hard for him to articulate.

So she waits. And in that moment she gives him, Bill sighs, shakes his head, and carefully unwinds one of his arms to spread his claws across his forehead.

“It’ll be easier up here,” he tells her. “I’m away from Foxglove, and … moving helps.”

With that, he twists and starts back into flying. Lanette looks over her shoulder and watches the beach recede, and the nagging feeling grows even more.

“Lanette,” he says, “you know I’m not going to hurt you, right?”

She turns back to him. “What? Of course not! I just … Bill, you really should go back. Or at least head back to shore. What if you lose your wings out here?”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” he says, casually. “I’m not about to change back. I can feel it. It’s stubborn this time.”

“What’s stubborn?”

Bill thinks for a moment, then banks in an arc and sails along, just above the water, parallel to the shore. “Lanette, what I’m about to tell you is going to sound crazy, but I assure you everything is under control.”

Lanette quirks an eyebrow. “Oh really?”

He bucks his head up just enough to let her see his smirk. “Bad choice of words. Anyway.” He straightens his neck again. “I don’t have to explain aura to you, but suffice to say, it’s not quite what we thought. Every type of energy is different, and it feels different to wield.”

“I-I know. You told me what it was like to wield Primrose’s fairy magic,” Lanette says.

Bill nods. “Dragon energy is different. It’s stronger and wilder than anything else I’ve held. It may be exacerbated by these other abilities, but either way, it’s … why I can’t change back. When I change, I let part of that energy out, or—if I’m changing back into human form—pull it back in. I think this time I let too much of it out.”

“Because of me.”

“No.” Bill’s tone is firm again, but this time, there’s something reassuring about it this time. Persistent. “No, Lanette, this was a long time coming. Don’t blame yourself.”

“That’s…” Lanette sighs and leans down, wrapping her arms tightly around Bill’s shoulders. “You didn’t bring up how long I’ve been here for no apparent reason. It’s partly my fault.” She embraces him a little tighter. “Maybe I should go back to Hoenn, if it’s causing you this much trouble.”

Bill shoots forward suddenly, then slaps his tail against the water and bursts back into the air. He hovers there, staring at the beach and leaving Lanette startled and shaking against his back.

“Sorry,” he says. “But … no. That won’t fix things.”

“Then … what do you want me to do?” Lanette asks, her voice thin and quiet.

Bill glances back at her. “Nothing. No, I—”

He grips his head with both claws this time, and Lanette pulls herself closer and tighter to him.

“What’s wrong?” she asks. “Please. Just tell me. I want to help. Is this because of me? Do I need to go?”

“No,” Bill says. “Please.”

“Then—”

Lanette tries to adjust her grip, but she slips. Bill tips back, surprised by the sudden shift in weight, and then, just like that, she’s falling. The water slams into her back, and she sinks, and for a long time, all she can see is darkness and a hazy spot of light and then something large dropping into the water after.

….

She wakes up sputtering and coughing. She’s not sure how long she’s been out, but it’s dark now, save for a dancing light beside her. She’s cold and warm all at the same time, soaked to the bone, and resting against something hard. Lanette coughs up a lungful of water and takes another moment to catch her breath, and when she’s finally calm enough to see straight, she finds herself gazing into the hazy image of a fire. A set of hands gently push something onto her face, and the world finally resolves properly through a pair of glasses. Before she can react, the thing she’s resting on shifts, and suddenly, she sees not only Foxglove—presumably the pokémon who gave her her glasses—in front of her but also one of Bill’s wings stretching over her protectively.

“Lanette,” Bill says, “I am so, so sorry.”

She sits up and wraps her arms around herself. “Well … you fished me out.”

Bill glances out to the ocean. There’s something about his face—something about it that looks more than a little embarrassed.

“What?” Lanette asks.

She feels a set of claws ease onto her forehead, and it takes her a second to notice that Foxglove is leaning in. And then, she her vision flashes, and she sees Bill, soaking wet, stumbling onto the beach with Lanette on his back. She sees him collapse, and her vision shifts as if she’s running to him, but he snaps his head up and growls—actually growls, bared teeth and all—until his face suddenly freezes with a look of horror. Then, he slumps onto his stomach, recoiling and shaking yet shielding Lanette’s body from the waves, as Foxglove leans down.

And then she’s back, under the night sky and sitting up beside both pokémon. She looks to Bill, who clears his throat and rubs the back of his head.

“Bill,” she says.

“I know what you’re about to say,” he says, his voice strained. “And I know I slipped. I promise you, I’m not getting worse.”

“Are you sure about that?!” she says. “Because what that looked like to me—”

“It’s the same thing I’ve been feeling for months!” Bill snaps back.

They fall silent, looking equally shocked at one another. Lanette tries to process this, tries to come up with an adequate response, tries to figure out what’s going on with him, but she’s too slow. Bill’s breathing visibly hitches, and he settles back down, head bowed.

“Lanette—” He stops, huffs, tries again. “I’ve been feeling this overwhelming need to protect you. I’d be lying if I said it’s new or only started after I gained these powers. I’ve always cared about you, and I’ve always wanted to keep you safe and happy. I think I tried to tell you that a few times in the past few years, but I’ve just been afraid of what admitting that would mean for us. Lately, it’s been shifting slightly, here and there, just like my body. I’m not sure if it’s because of my abilities or because of how long I’ve spent with you these past few months, but … I don’t want you to go. I feel like I _need_ to be with you.”

“Bill…” Lanette brought her knees to her chest. “I don’t need to be protected.”

He slapped his claws onto the wet sand and gave her a startled look. “I know! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it like that! I just—I can’t really help it if—”

She cuts him off. Not with words but but leaning down and kissing him on the forehead. It wasn’t a deep, romantic kiss. It was a quick one, chaste and meant to stop his slide into a verbal abyss. And it works. He stops, mouth open, eyes locked on hers. And she sits up and holds his muzzle in both of her hands and studies him curiously with a cock of her head.

“Huh,” she says. “I thought that would do it.”

“Do—what, change me back?”

Lanette shrugs and smiles and settles back into her seat against him. “It works in fairy tales.”

Bill snorts and laughs incredulously. “Lanette, this isn’t a fairy tale.”

“True. But … do you still feel stuck?”

He hesitates, then sighs and rests his head beside her hip. “Don’t worry about it. I just need to relax. It’ll settle down once I do.”

“What will settle down?”

Bill’s eyes flutter shut. “The dragonfire. That’s what’s keeping me in this form. Part of me thinks you need to be protected, so the dragon in me is trying to help out. Hence why I’m having trouble convincing my body that I need to be human right now.” He opens an eye. “It’s an oversimplification. I just … I don’t quite have the energy to explain it better. Just … it’s all connected to my emotions, put it that way.”

“No. I get it.” She rests her head against his shoulder and drapes her arm across his neck. “It’s a little cute, if you don’t mind me saying.”

He opens both eyes halfway and smirks at her again.

“Do you want to know a secret?” she asks.

“Hm?”

One of her hands absentmindedly strokes his crest. “When I say I’ve stayed here for the past several months because I was worried about you, what I meant to say is I feel the same way you do. I just can’t really turn into a dragon to show you that.”

“I know,” Bill mumbles into the sand. “I figured it out in February.”

“Oh. I see. Then … will knowing that put your mind at ease regarding what your feelings mean for us?” Lanette asks.

“No,” he admits.

“Okay. But … this doesn’t really change what we are to each other. You get that, right?”

“I do.” He curls his entire body around her, like a cat curling up in its owner’s lap. “I just can’t explain it.”

Lanette sighs, then turns over, stretches out her legs, and stares at the stars. “It’s so weird to hear you admit you can’t explain something.”

Bill snorts, then apologizes and says nothing more. Instead, he rests his claws on her hand, and for the rest of the night, he, Lanette, and Foxglove watch the stars.


	29. "Bill, your life was literally taken from a sci-fi movie from the 80s." "...and?"

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  You know, Bill, I'm sure your knowledge of the sciences is both deep and broad, but don't you think it might be helpful to get Professor Oak or Elm to take a look at you?

I would say yes, not only because that would be an extra mind besides Lanette and myself working out what’s going on but also because this is an incredible scientific discovery if I do say so myself, but on the other hand, I’m not entirely sure what more we can figure out about my situation. I certainly wouldn’t want to impose, and Lanette tells me that perhaps, despite the fact that apparently my situation is … very public, it would be a bad idea to involve more people. I’m not sure I fully understand that, as it’s not as if the government would swoop in, kidnap me, and subject me to strange scientific experiments or vivisection. I mean, we don’t live in a sci-fi movie.

`Bill, there’s a teleporter and a time machine in your private laboratory right now. —LH`

`And? —Bill`


	30. Okay, okay, okay, hear me out: what if we do MORE bad science?

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Just a theoretical question, but, theoretically, would it be "safer" if one was to make the "trigger" for the changes easier for one to control?

Oh, absolutely, but the challenge is in figuring out how to do just that, not only with my current situation but, perhaps, with future experiments.

* * *

“You promised me you wouldn’t do that anymore,” Lanette says.

Bill cringes and gives Lanette as best a sheepish grin as he could. It’s been a day since their conversation on the beach, and Bill … is still a flygon. She’s seen him like this before, whenever he’d experiment with his form, but every single time, it’s always looked a little strange—him hunched over so his long neck can bend his face close to the screen, three fingers clacking on the keys with just as much speed and dexterity as a human. He looks like a cartoon character, really, and she doesn’t know whether to laugh or feel incredibly sorry and/or concerned for her partner, really.

“Well,” he says slowly, “I must admit that one question about perhaps modifying the system for medical purposes was quite interesting.”

Lanette frowns. “Bill. You can just barely control your transformations as it is. The last thing you need is to tinker more with your genetic code.”

His grin turns from sheepish to mischievous, and his body practically flows from the chair to swirl around Lanette and her chair. One of his wings stretches up to wrap around her while his neck hooks around to let him study her face.

“But you must admit, it would be interesting to refine the system a bit,” he says. “Perhaps fix the trigger like that reader said. Create a targeting system. And if I need to test on myself—”

Lanette shakes her head. “Bill.”

His smile fades when he notices the look on her face. He hesitates, then places a hand on her knee.

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m just joking.”

Lanette sighs, then reaches for the glass of water on her desk. “Anyway, how’s working towards being human again going?”

There is a long, uncomfortable pause. Lanette peers over her glass mid-drink, at a Bill who is pointedly not looking at her. Setting her glass down, she cups his face with both hands and gently gets him to turn his head. She cups his muzzle with one hand and uses the other to gently stroke his crest; he responds with a pair of slowly closing eyes and a soft growl that sounds an awful like a purr.

“Still nothing?” she asks.

“No,” he says softly. “I’m almost there. I just … I need to relax a little more.”

She hesitates, then, she presses her forehead against Bill’s. “Maybe you should take a break from all of this, in that case. You don’t really take breaks, you know.”

“Mm.” He presses into her. “Maybe I should talk to Professor Oak.”

“Do you really think he’d offer any more insight about this?” Lanette asks. “This isn’t exactly something that happens every day.”

After a moment, he shakes his head. “I have no idea, really. But maybe he’d have advice.”

And then, after a long sigh, she finally responds: “Okay. Okay.”


	31. Fun with Genetics

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  What if you had your cell separator generate a flygon body from your flygon dna... Since there wasn't originally a flygon you merged with, would the generated flygon also be you? Would you have two bodies controlled by one mind? Or would there now be two Bills, one of whom is a flygon? Either way, think of all the multitasking you could do!

….

Ah, in order, responses to those thoughts following your first sentence:

1\. Very likely, assuming the end result wouldn’t simply be myself and a mess or a mess that happens to be two halves of me, both of which are very distinct possibilities, come to think of it.

2\. Sadly, no, I wouldn’t have two bodies, as my brain would either be divided between both or not present in one. If the other were to generate a brain of its own, then it would be its own separate copy of me, assuming that’s how it would work.

3\. This would be the most likely situation, actually.

4\. Hm. That’s a thought.

`No. —LH`

`What? I thought that was a thorough answer to a hypothetical situation! —Bill`

`I know what you’re actually thinking, and the answer is no, no more experiments. —LH`

`Oh, all right. If you insist… —Bill`

* * *

“But it’s a thought,” Bill continues.

It’s day three, and he’s still a flygon. He’s tried calling Professor Oak already—video phoned and everything—but his old mentor had very little advice. In fact, said old mentor was barely even fazed by the whole thing, much to Bill’s surprise and Lanette’s chagrin, but followed that thought up with the gentle reminder that he is not, in fact, a genetics expert, not that he would know much about Bill’s specific situation, given the novelty of it.

And that’s where they are now. Bill has a promise that there will be a follow-up call with a potential expert who might help, Lanette has the reassurance that Bill will be fine, and the two of them have a full inbox, a predicament, and a question at hand. And currently, Lanette sits facing Bill with her fingers laced together and her brow furrowed at that last one.

“What’s a thought?” she asks, her tone a warning.

“If I were to try to split myself, what would happen?” Bill asks.

“You’ve tried that already,” Lanette reminds him. “You said it removed some of the genetic material but not enough to revert you permanently to human form.”

“Ah, that was months ago, the first time we experimented with this,” Bill counters, one claw pointed up. “I haven’t tried to outright split myself, and perhaps I need to do it periodically too, just to remove excess flygon from my system.”

Lanette sighs, long and slow. “Bill … I really do think you need to take a break. You’re definitely not thinking clearly; otherwise, you’d know that’s not how that works.”

Bill cracks a grin.

“No,” she cuts him off, “you’d still propose splitting yourself in half, and we both know that you would. Don’t even try to question it or ask me why that one’s a bad idea.”

Bill’s smile vanishes. “Okay, checkmate. But say I take a break. What good would that do?”

“At most, it would give you the opportunity to relax, which you keep saying you need to do in order to transform back,” she says. “At least, it would give both our heads enough of a recharge to tackle this problem from a different angle. Professor Oak isn’t going to help, Bill. I know you think he knows everything about pokémon, but he told you himself: he doesn’t specialize in genetics.”

“But there are others who do.”

“And you’re looking at the only one among them who’s studied you long enough to have the best idea of what’s going on, and even she’s struggling to come up with a way to help you.”

And once again, Bill’s grin creeps back across his face. “You’ve been studying me?”

Just like that, Lanette’s face flushes bright red, and she buries it in her hands. “Please … please just take this seriously.”

“H-hey, I am.” Bill ambles to her side and rests his claws on one of her arms. “All right. You’ve convinced me. What did you have in mind?”

Lanette slips her face out of her hands and presses the latter together. She doesn’t look at Bill, instead focusing on the wall on the other side of the room. Then, slowly, she reaches into a drawer and pulls something out, then lays it flat on her desk for him to see.

“You’re … not going to like the first suggestion,” she says.

He glances down at the paper, then looks at Lanette’s face again.

“You’re right,” he says. “I don’t like the first suggestion.”

And he says this because right there, on the desk, is an invitation to the Pokémon League’s annual ball aboard the S.S. Anne, addressed to Lanette.


	32. Bill *really* hates fancy do's.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Hey hey maybe with enough self experimentation Bill can figure out how to trigger mega evolution in flygon.

Well, I suppose if anyone can figure it out…

* * *

“It’s amazing how you can go from dead serious to bragging about your abilities at the drop of a hat,” Lanette comments.

“Hey, it’s not bragging!” 

Bill looks up from the laptop he’d been abusing for the past ten minutes in what was clearly not an attempt to avoid discussing the SS Anne thing. More specifically, they’ve moved to the living room and study, where Lanette had brought in cups of tea for the both of them and where Bill had chosen to stretch out on the floor. At the moment, Lanette leans back on the couch, teacup and saucer in hand.

“I’m sure it’s not,” Lanette says.

Bill rolls over, resting his claws on his chest and pointing his muzzle at the ceiling. He thinks for a moment, then points upwards.

“Research shows—”

“Whose?”

“Sycamore’s.” Bill points at her. “And don’t start on how reliable it is.”

Lanette smirks and takes a sip.

“Anyway,” Bill continues slowly, “Sycamore’s research shows that there’s a very good chance flygon could have mega evolved at some point; the original Gaulean texts of _The Republic_ chronicle at least one mega flygon being present in the Storm of Dragons. Of course, there’s plenty of debate as to whether or not The Republic was an accurate account of the war between the Gaulean Empire and the Azure Kingdom or merely a myth is up for debate, especially as Platino was supposedly more of a storyteller and not a historian.”

“Common knowledge,” Lanette quips. “Every budding historian who’s tried their hand at the classics knows about that.”

“True.” Bill rolls back over and props his head up on his claws. “But what if it’s fact? I’m in an excellent position to delve deep into a flygon’s mind and discern once and for all whether or not they even have that power.”

“How would you even know?” Lanette asks.

Bill shrugs. “Meditation, perhaps. I could ask Lucky; he can mega evolve.”

“He never has.”

“Sam, then.”

“He knows not to enable you.”

Bill lifts his head and gives Lanette a scandalized look. “You didn’t!”

“I didn’t. Foxglove did.” Lanette takes another sip.

“Oh. Well, that’s fair.” Bill tears his eyes away from her and rests his chin back on his claws.

“More importantly,” Lanette adds, “you’re trying to distract me again.”

Bill stops, then looks up, this time with an innocent glance. “From what?”

“The SS Anne invitation.”

“Oh, yes, why _did_ they send an invite here?” Bill asks, his voice slightly edged.

“Your actual question: Why did they invite me instead of you?” Lanette responds. “And the answer is they figured out I’m living with you—”

“Less living with me and more staying here for an extended holiday.”

“—and that you’d never respond yourself.”

“Seven bloody years of invitations, and they finally get it in their heads,” Bill mutters. “Well, of course I’d never answer. Their parties are, quite frankly, very dull.”

“Translation,” Lanette states. “Full of people you don’t want to talk to who want to talk to you about things you don’t want to talk about, not full of nearly enough pokémon, and it’s on a boat, so you can’t escape. Am I close?”

“You forgot the part about having to wear a suit.”

“You already wear suits.”

“Not the kind they want me to wear.” Bill’s head lowers into his arms. “Blazing pretentious—why do you want to go, anyway? It’s not like I can make an appearance. Not like this.”

Lanette raises her eyebrows. “Just this afternoon, you didn’t have a problem calling Professor Oak in that form, and you don’t mind our readers knowing either. Why the sudden change of heart?”

“Neither of those things are … you never really had to deal with—okay, yes, you have, but the point is,” Bill says, “that I don’t mind showing myself to people who won’t make such a fuss about it. But the SS Anne party is full of people who would, including the media, which I know you haven’t had to deal with.”

There’s a pause, and then, Lanette slides off the couch to sit beside Bill. Setting aside the saucer, Lanette reaches out and rests a hand on her partner’s shoulders, right at the base of his long draconian neck.

“We don’t have to go to the party,” Lanette says, her voice as smooth and gentle as silk. “The invitation gets us a cabin on the ship. There’s plenty of room service, and we can stay on for a week-long cruise to Hoenn. Or if you’d rather not, we can go wherever you want to go. The point is, maybe we should go on vacation this summer. An actual vacation, just the two of us. Not like Galar where we were studying all of this in the first place and not like now, where we stay at home and do nothing but work all day and then hang out all night. How does that sound? Just you and me? Actually relaxing for once?”

Another long pause. And then:

“I’ll think about it,” Bill says. “But … with you? That sounds nice.”


	33. "Bill, we're *dating*."

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  what would you do if bill came out of the ball as a missingno

**LH:** Panic, most likely. Then take a deep breath, make myself a cup of tea, and scramble to do everything in my power to figure out how to revert Bill back from what’s clearly an unstable form.

* * *

“You do care!” Bill leaned over Lanette’s shoulder to read off the screen.

She, in turn, sighed quite heavily.

“Will of the Titans, Bill,” she breathed. “We just confessed our feelings for each other two days ago.”


	34. There's definitely a movie about this.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Incredibly bad idea I know, but if Bill were to fuss with something now, would he become a 3 part human flygon and smth else, or do you think the current genes might just cancel out?

That depends. Apparently, if I fuse with a full subject, then the system will recognize us as two beings that could separate. If that’s the case, then one of four things will happen. The first possibility is the most optimistic one based on past mergers, in which we separate with no real consequences to either of us, save for the possibility of very minor abilities granted to myself. The second possibility is the slightly uglier one, in which the system recognizes that two complete beings entered the system but doesn’t know what to do with the third set of genetic material and thus splits it between the two of us, rendering us both partially-flygon hybrids. The third possibility is an even uglier version of the second, in which the system gets completely confused about what goes where and simply mixes our DNA up completely, leaving us both chimeric mixes of two different pokémon and a human. The fourth and final possibility is that the system safely separates the full pokémon from me but doesn’t know how to put me back together and essentially … scrambles me completely.

The alternative, of course, is that we don’t separate, at which point we may be considered a chimera of flygon, human, and the third pokémon, yes, but we would essentially be two beings in one body, which … is not an existence I would particularly enjoy on a long-term basis, no. (You would think so, but it’s really difficult to think when you’ve got someone else’s thoughts floating about in your head.)

On the other hand, if I were to merely fuse more genetic material to myself the way I had with the flygon sample, then the end result would likely be that I’d simply add another form and set of powers to my arsenal, which … would actually be rather interesting, if I may say so myself.

The long and short of it is, no, the additional genetic material wouldn’t cancel anything out. It’s just that there are multiple possible outcomes, and really only a handful of them result in the chimera you’re describing. The rest … well. They serve as the reasons why I can’t entirely argue that my partner is wrong in stopping me from conducting further experiments.


	35. I'd say "click here if you like soft shippy stuff," but that's the rest of this arc from here on out.

> **unto-myself-together asked:**  
>  Wouldn't it be great if flygon were telepathic?

Yes.

Yes, it would be.

* * *

Lanette glances worriedly at her partner. “I really hope you’re not thinking of fusing samples of Fox’s genetic code to your own.”

Even though his eyes are shielded by those red bulbs, Lanette can still see Bill’s roll. “Don’t be silly. A kadabra’s strongest powers are telekinetic. If I wanted telepathy, I’d consider solosis.” He pauses, then taps his chin with a claw. “Come to think of it…”

“Bill.”

He looks at her then, and he stops. He’d always imagined Lanette looking at him in exasperation whenever she’d say his name like that. Really, he’d always imagined Lanette looking at him in exasperation whenever she’d tell him sternly not to do something.

He was wrong.

The look on her face right now isn’t something of annoyance or frustration or anything of the sort. It’s … concern. Furrow-browed, soft-frowned, gentle concern. It’s the look of a person who’s watching someone stick their hand in fire and debating whether or not to jump in and pull them back out. It’s a pleading look, as if every crease and angle of her face is begging him not to do something stupid. And the more he stares at her, the more he realizes he _can’t_ do whatever he was thinking of doing … and that’s when he realizes he’s been leaning away from her, crest raised and wings twitching in agitation.

He clears his throat. “Ah. It … it was just a joke.” He relaxes, straightening his posture while reaching out to rest a set of claws on her shoulder. “You know I’m only joking with you whenever I propose these outlandish things, right?”

“Half the time, I don’t even know,” Lanette admits.

And he … can’t really blame her. Because is she really wrong? He can’t really lie here; he’s always at least half-serious about his proposals. Still … did she always look like that whenever she told him off?

“Right,” he says. “Sorry.”

And he removes his claws, and they drop immediately into an awkward silence.

“Ah,” he says. “You know, I’ve given it some thought, and … I wouldn’t mind going on the SS Anne with you.”

“Really?” By the tone of her voice, he can tell Lanette has perked up a little.

“Mmhmm.” He nods. “Only if we can avoid the party entirely.”

He turns his head back to her to find that her expression has softened. She even gives him a slight, shy grin. He’s always found Lanette to be cute, in a girl-next-door way. But this? Maybe it’s because he’s just noticed how concerned she looked a moment ago, or maybe it’s because of all the reasons why he’s still a flygon, but something about that expression lights something in him and warms him in a way the dragonfire doesn’t.

His tail is wagging. He doesn’t notice it himself. In fact, he doesn’t notice until Lanette’s eyes flick down, then back to his face, then lingers on him as the rest of her face turns a little red. Whirling to face her, he stomps on his tail with one paw and scratches the back of his neck awkwardly.

“I-I mean. These parties aren’t really that great at all,” he says. “It’s just a bunch of people milling about and going on and on about their pokémon co—”

He stops as soon as he notices her expression shift again. The redness fades a little, and she gives him an awkward smile—the sort of sympathetic smile one would give a person who said something quite painfully obvious.

In other words, she doesn’t have to say a word, and he doesn’t need telepathy. He knows she’s thinking of all the times he’s talked about his own pokémon collections excitedly with less-formally-dressed pokémaniacs.

Okay. Touché.

Luckily, Lanette saves him from further embarrassment.

“Well,” she says. “We’ll make the arrangements. And hey, you at least don’t have to go. You’ll be a flygon, after all. You can stay behind in the cabin while I chat with potential investors.”

Ever the pragmatist. Bill can’t help but smile.

Or, well. He can’t help but smile at that and one other important detail.


	36. Lanette doesn't know what Bill would do without her (and neither does Bill).

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  I was going to ask how you planned to handle the trainers Prof. Oak sends your way if you're still part flygon, but then I remembered that you didn't care at all that Red saw you being a clefairy, so nevermind...

Well, to be fair, I’d initially been bothered by Red seeing me as a clefairy, especially when he’d tried to walk out after I asked for his help. It’s just that after the rest of the world found out about that little mishap (not that I’m particularly angry about Red sharing that detail) and after subsequent mishaps, I reflected on it and realized these experiences weren’t really all that bad, losing my human form aside.

But as for handling the trainers Professor Oak sends my way, luckily, he really doesn’t, and I deliberately settled in an area most trainers don’t really travel to unless they’re either lost or specifically looking for me. As for Oak himself, he’s taken my experiments in stride, after he learned that, all things considered, I come out of those accidents safe and sound. Then again, Oak is remarkably unflappable, to be honest.

* * *

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Idle curiosity, do you have any automatic safeguards set up in the system in case you get stuck in there?

**Bill:** Yes. It’s called “assume Lanette will be a sport and give me a hand.”

**LH:** What he means is that in order to operate the storage system, he needs a trainer to deposit him in there, which would be me. The cell separation system would also require an operator to activate. As for the teleportation system, there really isn’t much of a risk of him getting stuck inside, unless there was a fundamental failure, but … I’m pretty sure he’s planned for that.

**Bill:** Hey now! Give me some credit!


	37. Lanette is volunteering to test *jack all* while she's at the Sea Cottage.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Hypothetically, if you tried to have a child while you're like this, how would that turn out? Would it be possible to get a viable embryo with a human? A flygon? Would that turn out 100% human or 100% flygon or a mix?

**LH:** Since Bill didn’t bother to handle this correctly the last time and since I’m the genetics expert between us (shockingly enough), allow me to answer this one.

The most likely possibility is that Bill isn’t compatible with anything alive right now. That isn’t to say he can’t have children—just that his genetic material can’t combine with anyone else’s to create a viable embryo. On the other hand, there’s a very slim chance that it can, but given the fact that Bill’s genetic code is irreversibly fused with flygon DNA, the child will be at least partly flygon. Now, I don’t think his baby would have the same abilities he does, since they would be three-quarters human instead of half, but I don’t think slightly greener skin, claws, or even weaker dragon-type moves would be out of the question.

Of course, I’m not volunteering to test any of these theories.

* * *

And there goes Bill’s smile.

“Did you—” Bill notices that his voice is breaking, then clears his throat and tries again. “Did you have to phrase it like that?”

“You’re not the only one who says things to get a rise out of someone else,” Lanette replies with a sly grin.

Bill practically leans onto his tail now to keep it from moving. To that, Lanette sets her laptop aside and moves to his side. She cups his muzzle in her hands and, with a gentle yet firm hold, keeps him from looking away.

“Sorry,” she says. “I mean, you’re always the one throwing out jokes left and right on this blog. How can I pass up the opportunity to fire off one of my own?”

She presses her forehead against his, and he feels his face burn.

“Sorry if this question bothers you,” she says. “I know it did the last time.”

He tries to shake his head, but she’s got him. “No,” he says. “No, ah, it’s an important one to answer.”

“Is it?”

Bill remains silent, his eyes drifting towards a corner of the room.

“You know … I think I’ve figured out why you haven’t changed back yet,” she says.

That gets his attention. “W-what?”

Lanette pulls her head away and pets his crest. “You never told me what, exactly, freaked you out so much about this question. You’ve confessed your feelings for me, sure, but it’s clear something’s still bothering you. So … what happened?”

Bill exhales through his nostrils and relaxes his shoulders. “I thought I made it rather obvious, haven’t I?”

“No,” she replies, “you really haven’t.”

He gives her an awkward smile, then presses his claws against her shoulders. Lifting his head out of her hands, he studies her for a second and continues, “I was, well, imagining you … involved.”

A thick silence ensues that’s both exactly what Bill was expecting and exactly what he’d been dreading.

“You asked,” he says, as if that makes things better.

“The idea of having children with me is that—”

“No!” Bill interrupts with a hushed, hurried voice. “No, no, no—Lanette, please don’t think of it like that.” He cups her face in his claws, then shrugs. “Well, ah, given my personal feelings towards sex, it’s a little bit of that, but really, that’s not it at all! Lanette … I don’t want to do anything that would put you in danger, including conducting an experiment when I can’t ensure your safety.”

Lanette hesitates, then breaks into another smirk. “You’re willing to forgo science for me?”

“Lanette, please.”

“I know,” she replies, her tone a little more somber. “It’s sweet, but you realize I’d never be in any danger, right? Even if we were able to conceive a child, I’d be monitoring everything way more closely than you would. I can handle things if anything went wrong. And as I said, it’s not likely that anything grisly would happen to me.”

“You make it sound so easy,” he says.

Lanette shrugs. “Human anatomy isn’t as scary as you might think it is.” She presses a hand into one of Bill’s. “So. Does that reassure you enough?”

This time, the awkward silence is Bill’s fault. Lanette notices, and her face falters.

“Bill?”

“I need to be honest with you,” Bill says.

She opens her mouth, probably to ask, but before she can get a word out, Bill shifts. His palms turn softer, and he can sense her more now—the softness of her skin, her scent, the colors of her face, everything. And then, he’s back: himself, human, hands framing Lanette’s face. She stares at him, as if struggling to process what she’s seeing.

“You could turn back this entire time?” she asks.

“No,” he says. “Just for the past hour. I didn’t want to do it because we were comfortable.”

“Because we were—” Lanette snorts and slips between Bill’s arms to embrace him, face buried in his shoulder. “What am I going to do with you?”

Bill chuckles and wraps his arms loosely around her. “You know … I’ll be here when you figure that out.”


	38. ALL OF THESE ARE BAD IDEAS.

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  bill did you get the pokerus

Unfortunately, no. I get the distinct feeling I need to interact wild pokémon more to come across it.

`Why … why unfortunately. —LH`

`Why else? Think about it, Lanette. There’s so much we don’t know about pokérus. For example, can it be transmitted to humans? —Bill`

`… —LH`

`Bill, allow me to educate you about this thing called the Black Death. —LH`

* * *

> **askvoidbearandfriends:**  
>  The thing is that Pokerus helps pokemon get stronger. Bill does have a good point for testing it.

**LH:** It’s important to remember that just because it’s beneficial or harmless to pokémon doesn’t necessarily mean that it would be to humans too. There are plenty of cases in which an animal or pokémon vector can live their entire lives without even knowing they’re harboring a certain bacteria, virus, or parasite, but once those diseases cross over to a human host, they can wreak absolute havoc on the human body.

Granted, pokérus is relatively harmless to humans because it’s just not compatible with us. In other words, it might be able to infect a jynx or a mr. mime, but the moment it touches us, it realizes it can’t do anything with us and simply washes off the next time we take a bath or wash our hands. Even accidentally ingesting some of the mites that cause pokérus doesn’t harm us, as the composition of our digestive systems just neutralizes it before it can do anything.

But—and this is a huge but here—Bill’s neither human nor pokémon but rather both, so we can’t say for certain what reaction he’d have to pokérus. Will he have more of an immunity to it because he’s part human but not a complete immunity because he’s part pokémon? Will we see an entirely new reaction because he’s something completely new? And if so, will that reaction be beneficial, or will it be something else? Could catching a disease that normally affects only pokémon destabilize Bill even further? Lock him into his flygon form again? I just don’t think it would be a good idea to take a risk and just slap a pokérus sample onto his arm like I know he would. Not until we can get more information, at least.

 **Bill:** Okay, but hear me out. It took one man drinking a sample of _H. pylori_ to discover one of the foremost culprits behind stomach ulcers.

 **LH:** You shouldn’t be taking that as a precedent!

* * *

> **storageporygon:**  
>  I think you should do tests if you do contact it, but don’t go looking for it.

**Bill:** I was with you for the first half of that sentence.

* * *

> **storageporygon:**  
>  I meant “contract!” Lanette, I hope you agree with me.

**LH:** Oh, don’t worry. If I hear he’s planning an expedition to gather samples of pokérus, I’ll have his poké ball on hand at all times.

 **Bill:** Ha. Why would I need to plan an expedition if I could simply ask one of my fellow pokémaniacs if anyone has a pokémon with pokérus I could borrow?

 **LH:** ….

 **Bill:** Wait, forget I said anything.

 **LH:** _Too late._

* * *

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Ok so. Bill. What if ... You just keep adding dna from different pokemon to yourself ... Until .... You become a ditto!

**LH:** That’s not how that works.

 **Bill:** Now, now. They have a point.

 **LH:** Bill, you said it yourself not too long ago: you can’t really control how fusion happens. You _think_ fusing more genetic material to yourself will add more powers to your current form, but what will that even look like? Will you just add more pokémon to your arsenal of forms or, more likely, will you just build up this weird chimeric monster out of your body? Will you even be able to control everything, given that you can barely control your form as it is? And even then, are you really all that comfortable with the theories that surround ditto? Specifically the ones that state ditto came about as the result of _unstable genetic experiments_? Are you absolutely sure you’d be able to survive whatever qualifies as _that_?

 **Bill:** Ah. Fair enough. I suppose the best solution, if I really wanted to become a ditto, would be to take the direct approach and fuse ditto’s genetic material to myself instead of as many pokémon as I could possibly find.

 **LH:** …I really don’t want to encourage you, but I feel like you’re making me choose the lesser of two evils here. At which point, yes, that would be the less self-destructive route. _Technically._


	39. Aaaaaaand kiss!

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  I want to thank you for inspiring me to turn myself into a Porygon. Now I can live my dreams of isekai-ing myself into my favorite videogames, and maybe one day I can become the internet!

Well, delighted to be of service, anonymous! Do tell us how it goes.

`…. —LH`

* * *

Lanette sighs and looks wearily to her partner. He’s been human for the past … what was it? Fifteen minutes and counting so far? A record, surely.

“You’re absolutely incorrigible,” she says.

And he cracks a grin that reminds her of an eevee about five seconds away from mischief of some kind and, with phone still in hand, drops into the seat next to her.

“Perhaps,” he says, “but would you have me any other way?”

And that’s the whole thing. As absolutely indescribable as this whole flygon business has been, as absolutely frustrating as the rest of her career has been intertwined with his, she can’t imagine wanting to spend as much time with anyone else. And believe her, she’s had her options. She could have worked for Devon. She could have stayed with Brigette. Hell, she could have even dumped Bill onto someone else and tried her luck with one of the other administrators. (Titans know Cassius has been trying for years, and at least he’s got his head on his shoulders, underneath that tough facade.)

But at the same time, she knows she couldn’t. Because deep down, she knows none of them are nearly as gentle, as sincere, as everything as she could want in a partner as Bill.

Or, for that matter, as fun to be around. She will never admit that last part.

Thinking of that last one, she leans against him and stares at the ceiling.

“So,” she says. “We’ve finally gotten everything out in the open between us, then.”

“Ah, I suppose so,” Bill admits.

Lanette leans her head into his shoulder. “Do you think we should tell the others?”

“Lanette, just because I act like I’m unaware of much at all outside of our work and pokémon doesn’t mean I’m completely oblivious to the things people talk about.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’m aware that there’s a betting pool among some of the administrators on how long it’d be before we…” He trails off.

“Oh, so we should hold off to punish the participants, then?” Lanette asks, cracking a grin of her own.

“I was thinking more that it would be unprofessional to even address, never mind setting a terrible example for the others, but now that you mention it...”

She shifts, pulling herself up to look into his eyes, and for a moment, they simply sit there, side by side, seeing each other seemingly for the first time.

“Guess we have to revise that rule about professional romances,” Lanette says. “Weird, isn’t it?”

Bill’s mischievous grin slowly returns as one of his hands circles Lanette’s wrist. “I don’t know. Given our usual line of work, it may be the least weird thing we’ve ever done.”

And Lanette looks deep into Bill’s eyes and smiles. And she leans in and kisses him, and this time, it’s not as chaste as the kiss she gave him when he was a dragon. She feels his arms encircle her, and he leans back, guiding her along with him until she’s leaning full-on against his chest. And then, for that brief moment, nothing else matters but the warmth of his body and the faint smell of sea salt and mint in his hair and the way his lips and tongue are just as soft and sweet as the rest of him is.

And then, just like that, they separate, and Lanette rests her head against his chest and thinks. She knows that nothing they could say could ruin the moment. And so, she goes for it.

“Okay, but seriously,” she says. “Stop enabling our readers.”

To which Bill, still smiling that sly grin, responds with a simple, “No.”


	40. Of course, Bill can't imagine *why* Lanette would have a problem with that.

> **dzamie asked:**  
>  So, Bill, how was that pokeball this time around? And exactly how Flygon do you have to be to get it to accept you?

Not as bad as you would think, to be honest. I admit I’m struggling to remember if I’ve ever described it, but being in a poké ball distorts one’s perceptions. You aren’t entirely aware of time or space, nor do you really sense your body or much of your world around you. You can see colors if you try hard enough, but most of the time, it’s much like being in a sensory deprivation chamber. Eventually, you make out whatever you want to see and essentially imagine yourself to be in a relaxing place, even if you aren’t anywhere at all. For example, at first, all I could sense was that I was in this place full of floating colors, but eventually, I started to imagine myself in my study, and … there I was. I’d imagine that if I were to be placed in a luxury ball or the sort, the feeling would be even more vivid or relaxing, hence those balls’ effects.

One thing is for certain, though: I could _hear_ everything going on outside of my ball, which was … rather surreal, I must say. Imagine being in an empty room but also hearing voices of people who aren’t there.

The only reason why none of this is maddening is because it, well, simply wasn’t. There was something calming about the whole experience, like everything I was feeling was perfectly normal and as if it was right for me to stay in that ball. I suppose you could say that’s the capture matrix for you.

Anyway, as for your second question, apparently, not very much at all. So long as I’m partially flygon, the ball still recognizes that part and, well, draws the entirety of me in. Lanette and I have tested this thoroughly.

`At his insistence. Important clarification. —LH`

* * *

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Bill... You still ok in there? Did you get stuck in the pokeball?

Thank you, anonymous, but yes, I’m fine. Terribly sorry for worrying all of you! I’d only spent a few days in there, and I was perfectly fine when I’d finally popped out again … albeit a little bit sore, I admit. I’m guessing that was just a reaction from my human half.

Granted, Lanette, on the other hand, seemed a little bit frazzled, though I can’t imagine why.

`You were in there for over a week! —LH`


	41. It's a pillow fort!

> **Anonymous asked:**  
>  Seeing as Bill is part Flygon, is he going to end up inadvertantly showing some courting and nesting behaviors...? 👀

**LH:** ….

**LH:** Come to think of it, that could explain some of the things he does now…

* * *

“What?” Bill looks up from his phone long enough to look at her. “What do you mean?”

Lanette leans back in her chair and lifts a finger to the ceiling. “The time you started doing that weird hopping dance in the kitchen?”

“That wasn’t a weird dance,” Bill replies. “I was trying to get around you while you were carrying that hot skillet, remember?”

“Okay, but every time I lie down, you’re suddenly curled around me. What about that?” Lanette asks.

Bill quirks an eyebrow at her. “Should I not? I’ve always been rather affectionate in relationships, but if it makes you uncomfortable…”

“No,” Lanette says quickly. Then, she studies him carefully and sighs. “Okay. Okay. So how about what you’re doing right now?”

Bill tears his eyes away from her to look at the clothes in his hands. Then, he looks at the nest of clothing he’s apparently been making on the couch, large enough to fit a flygon and a clutch of eggs. Then, he looks back to her with a blink.

“I’m … folding laundry?” he says.

“Um.” Lanette lowers her arm and tilts her head. “Huh.”


	42. Asking for a friend. (No, really.)

> **lucario2012 asked:**  
>  Hi Bill! This may be an odd question, but what was it like to grow a tail? Asking on behalf of my Chimchar who's nervous about gaining a limb upon evolving - I know your experience almost certainly wasn't quite that way, but I thought I'd ask to help reassure him anyway. Also I know a witch and I'm tempted to ask her to give me a tail and then him a tail, temporarily, so I can show him there's nothing to be afraid of and he can try it out before actually evolving. Is that a good idea, or bad?

Ah, it was … unusual, I admit. It wasn’t unpleasant, exactly, but it was certainly weird. It felt like it belonged to me, but my brain knew it wasn’t supposed to be there. At first, it felt a lot like … do you know that feeling you get when a limb falls asleep? It felt like that for about a half a day—thoroughly unpleasant, really. But then afterwards, it felt, well, fine, but it was strange sensing things that far behind me. “Cold,” I suppose? Because it felt like I’d left my arm out of a sleeve for far too long—likely because I’d forget to exercise it.

Come to think of it, that might be the bet way to describe the experience. I’d forget that it’s there after a while. In some cases, this means that I wasn’t aware of what I did with it, which made hiding my emotions particularly tricky, apparently. In other cases, this means that I literally would forget I’d have an appendage several feet long behind me, which made doors, furniture, and any path wherein people would have to walk rather difficult to navigate. One of the things you didn’t get to see in last year’s logs were the number of times Lanette had to apologize because I’d accidentally tripped someone by leaving my tail out. We nearly got thrown out of at least one pub for it.

That having been said, I admit probably none of this would be helpful to reassuring your chimchar that gaining a tail is not a big deal at all. Except, well, it may give you some insight as to what to look for if he ever looks a little confused, and you certainly know what to keep reminding him to do. (Trust me—closing a door on your tail hurts.) But ultimately, it really isn’t a big deal at all to gain a tail. If anything, you’ll get used to it quickly and then completely forget that it’s there.

On the other hand, given that monferno and infernape are a little more reliant on their tails as appendages than flygon are, your chimchar may actually grow to rely on or even love his tail, rather than forget about it completely.

As for whether or not you should grow a tail … honestly, I would recommend everyone do it at least once. As uncomfortable as I made it sound above, it’s really an experience.

`Bill, **no.** —LH`


End file.
